Theaterspeak

Daniel Talbott on His Powerful New Play YOSEMITE

2012-02-05T21:43:00.016-05:00

"I think of the structure of the play like a giant wave, or the structure of drowning – falling down hard and then trying to fight upwards towards the surface and air..."

Daniel Talbott
Playwright

What was the inspiration for Yosemite?

It was commissioned by the wonderful ladies of the 24Seven Lab (Sharon Freedman, Edith Freni, and Sarah Hayon) who I love, and it literally wouldn’t exist without them and all their love and support. It’s also a play that I wrote for one of my best friends and one of the greatest actors and people and I know, Seth Numrich.

This play is so much for my family, who I love deeply, and who I have been through a lot with, and it's especially for my brothers and sisters and my mom. There was a time that we lived in a place that was full of so many people, and especially their kids, who had such great intentions and tons of heart and imagination, but were absolutely crushed and destroyed by poverty and drugs and loss. Life can be really, really tough, but through each other, and with each other, I feel so many of us were able to crawl out of that pit, and I couldn't be more thankful for that - and this play is about that for me.How would you describe the play?

It’s a really different play for me, and unlike anything I’ve written before. I think of the structure of the play like a giant wave, or the structure of drowning – falling down hard and then trying to fight upwards towards the surface and air. It’s a long, singular movement that hopefully burns deep and hard and forward til the lights ghost out at the end of the play. I love this play and am so proud of the work we all did on it.

I wanted to try to write something you couldn’t coast on or hide in and that doesn’t work unless everyone sits inside it and lives it fresh and new each night, and that goes for the audience as much as the actors. I was trying to write a play that forces collaboration. The play for me is about vulnerability and empathy and you have to really be willing to come forward and sit inside it and with the characters and not expect the play to come to you and do all the work.What was the writing process like?

I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to write about or where I was going to start when I was lucky enough to be asked to do 24Seven with everybody, and I felt pretty freaked out and stupid because of that. And then, I was sitting in the middle of a reading for Rattlestick at the Barrow Street one day, and the theatre was in the three-quarter thrust configuration for Our Town, and I don’t know why but I started just seeing a snowy clearing in a forest with snow falling, and then I started seeing these kids who I knew were siblings, scattered around the stage, alone, trapped and freezing and digging. It reminded me a lot of my brothers and sisters and when we were living up in Sonora CA, and I started thinking about them, and just trying to start writing it and not judging it in any way.

It was wonderful in the 24Seven Lab because we had the structure where we had to come in with new pages every week, and that really helped me. I was surrounded by brilliant writers, actors, dramaturges, and friends, and with their love and support, and talent, I kept creeping forward slowly, turtle-like.
What has the development process been like after you had a draft, or some scenes, or a semblance of an idea?

I think I got about sixty pages or so in during the lab, and then thank god they asked me to come up and do their equally wonderful retreat, cause it was up there in these haunted ass woods in this huge retreat center that I got to finish the first draft of the play. I remember sitting outside by myself on this hill working on the end, and I know it’s stupid, but just crying and feeling like I was letting go of something and turning it into something I loved, into work. This play really just kind of fell out. I don’t intellectualize a lot of stuff like this. I just try to stay open as much as I can and share it the best I can. I don’t mean that to sound airy fairy, but I just try to open to a situation and write it the way it comes to me and really work hard not to judge it. I owe so much to all the 24Seven folks and it was an incredible experience, and again I feel so lucky to have gotten to work with them I can’t even say.

Once I had a decent draft of the play, we did a reading of it at Rattlestick and a bunch of friends who I love came, and gave me a lot of great feedback on it, and I can’t remember when David said he wanted to do it, but when he did, it really was a dream come true for me, and I didn’t touch it a lot after that til we got into rehearsal with the wonderful Pedro Pascal and the brilliant brilliant cast--Seth, Libby, Noah, and Katie. Once we were in rehearsal it was such a collaboration in every way. I feel like everyone who worked on this production has such a piece of themselves in this play and I love that, and for me that’s how it should be.I love writing plays so much and I find it really hard to call myself a playwright yet just because there are so many people out there who I love and look up to, and I just don’t think I’m there yet, but I’m working hard. And it was a really big deal for me that David wanted to do my second play too. I think someone once said to me anyone can write one play, but it’s the folks who keep going, especially when they have nobody really telling them they should or have to, who get to call themselves playwrights in the end. You just have to keep writing the good and the bad, and creating plays and theater, no matter what.

What is it like being a director and an actor but being the writer in the room?

I don’t think about it very much. I really just try to focus on the work and go as far into it as possible. I think everything I’m lucky enough to do and be a part of helps me grow and deepen and expand. Theater to me is all about saying yes, possibility, expanse, and bravery. I feel there’s too much “no”, and making ourselves small, and not enough just jumping into the fucking void and swimming. There’s too much judgment and cowardice and hiding behind coolness, bullshit power lists, reviews, awards, cliques, and smugness. It really doesn’t mean anything and it gets in the way of the work, and I feel like the more I can do in the theatre, the further I can push myself to be braver and to take more risks – the further I can go into stuff.What's next?

I’m working on two Off-Broadway plays right now with Rising Phoenix Rep and our producing partner Piece By Piece Productions, both of which I love, and are by brilliant, brilliant playwrights, and we have our Cino Night series going on through June. And I’m also working on trying to write a couple new plays, a few directing projects, trying to figure out some possibilities and jobs out of town to run around some, hopefully starting a film company with one of my best friends Aria, and getting to work on Much Ado About Nothing again right now with the wonderful Boomerang folks. I’m also trying to find time to get my booty back on stage and keep doing TV and film work as an actor. Just keep working and spending time with my family and friends, and get to the ocean and mountains as much as possible.

YOSEMITE, written by Daniel Talbott, directed by Pedro Pascal with Kathryn Erbe, Noah Galvin, Seth Numrich, and Libby Woodbridge is running at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater now through February 26th, Wed-Fri at 8PM, Sat at 2PM and 8PM, Sun at 3PM.

Mac Rogers and Gideon Productions' Advance Man is Sci-fi Fabulous

2012-01-21T16:14:00.020-05:00

"Ever since the first time I stayed up past "Sesame Street" and "The Electric Company" to see my first episode of "Doctor Who" I never went back."

-Mac Rogers
Playwright

How did the BFG Collective come about and how did it get involved with The Secret Theatre?

SEAN WILLIAMS (pictured right): Several years ago, a big group of us started to try to coordinate our productions, purely because we didn't want to miss anything that the others did. So we would shift our runs by a week, or try to make sure we had at least an off night or two in order to see each other's pieces. About a year ago, we were at a community function with about forty different theater companies and we were going around the room hawking our upcoming shows, and I mentioned that we were going to be producing a trilogy of plays in 2012.

Tim Errickson of Boomerang came up to me after the meeting and suggested that he could take the 7 or 8 weeks between our first two shows for their rep season, and as soon as he said that, we knew we wanted to talk to Gus Schulenburg at Flux to take the last space. We thought it might be possible to share resources, set pieces, labor, that kind of thing, and most importantly be assured that we could actually *see* each other's shows. The truth is that all three of our companies love what the others do, but we all do completely different things, so it felt like a really good marriage. The only problem we had is that we're all very picky about the kinds of theaters we are willing to produce in.Because of our enormous good luck within The New York International Fringe Festival, we've ended up producing in some of the most beautiful off-Broadway houses in the city. We were completely spoiled by the Lucille Lortel and 45 Bleecker and The Soho Playhouse. And both Flux and Boomerang need space, actual breathing *space* for their shows to come alive. So we looked and looked for months, but couldn't find a place that had the room and the beauty that we really wanted, until we stumbled on to The Secret Theatre. Because so many of us live in Queens and Brooklyn, or right off the 7 in Manhattan, the space and the location were just perfect for what we wanted to do. Not to mention the fact that Richard Mazda, who runs the space, is an old theater guy from way back and just completely gets what we're all about.

How did you meet you guys meet each other?

SEAN: At school, where Mac was a student and I was a foul-mouthed hanger-on, I noticed that this tall goofy guy consistently said the funniest stuff whenever I was at a party. So, I started standing close to him at parties, until he finally said, "Who the hell are you?"

MAC: I worked with Sean and Jordana (Williams - Director) at the student-run Lab Theater at UNC-Chapel Hill. Jordana acted in a play I wrote my sophomore/her freshman year of college, so we go way, way back. In reuniting in New York (close to when they got married), we discovered that we shared not only a theatrical aesthetic, but also an ethic of providing audiences with top-quality entertainment while ensuring that we make the best and most courteous use of both our audience and our colleagues. "Gideon" was the name of Sean's Dungeons and Dragons character when he was younger, and that set the template for most of the work we do now, where we use the genre forms we loved as kids (and still love) while infusing them with more complex adult themes.

When did you form Gideon Productions and what has the experience been like?

MAC: We formed Gideon in 1999 and produced our first show in 2000. I'd say the experience has been one of slow and steady accumulation. We had to do a number of shows before people started remembering us from one show to the next. It honestly took until 2009 before we were able to enjoy a sense of public anticipation within a certain sphere for our shows, but the nice thing is I think we feel like we earned it.

Today, I have a firmer handle on my writing, Jordana is an accomplished and respected director, and Sean is a superb producer and a well-lived presence in the indie theater scene (and an amazing actor, as ADVANCE MAN audiences will see.) My wife Sandy joined Gideon a few years ago and has quickly become invaluable, and the set for ADVANCE MAN is a major creative triumph for her.

How do you work together?

SEAN: There are four of us, and although we've tried to assign regular theater-company type roles to each other, the best description I've come up with is nautical. Sandy Yaklin is the engineer and shipbuilder; she comes up with all the physical plans for the things that actually exist. Jordana is the captain, steering the boat from the top of the rigging, able to see far further than any of the rest of us. Mac is the actual ship, the one thing that's keeping all the rest of us afloat. And I'm the engine, flooring it, making tons of noise, obnoxiously and furiously pushing us forward without really looking which way we're going. It seems to work out just fine.

What has it been like working on ADVANCE MAN?

SEAN: There was a moment, about two weeks in, when I was having trouble with my lines, when one of the rehearsals got very rocky, and I felt a little bit sad. After about 90 seconds of feeling sorry for myself, I was overwhelmed with the sense that, for the entirety of my adult life, I had always hope and prayed that I might be in a position where I was lucky enough to be worried about the very things I was worrying about. This has been, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the very best project I have ever worked on in my life.How would you describe The Honeycomb Trilogy?

MAC: It's a science fiction epic about an American family split apart by an extraterrestrial occupation, and, more specifically, about a sister and brother on opposite sides of a global civil war forced to make excruciating moral choices. It's action-packed, sexy, intense, hopefully funny, and hopefully somewhat moving underneath it all.

Do you go home and dream about pods? (I did.)

Sean: I didn't, strangely. And it's the first show where I didn't have The Actor's Nightmare.

Mac, how did you come to playwriting?

In elementary school I acted in children's theater plays and wrote pulpy sci-fi short stories. As I got less patient with the plays I was doing, it was inevitable that those interests would mix.

Were you always interested in Science Fiction?

For most of my life, certainly - ever since the first time I stayed up past "Sesame Street" and "The Electric Company" to see my first episode of "Doctor Who." I never went back. As a result of discovering science fiction at such an early, earnest age, it's always been very serious and meaningful to me, never campy. It was important to me that with ADVANCE MAN, the sci-fi ideas be taken as seriously as the human drama - to actually weave the two together.

What are most people's reactions when you tell them about the play?

MAC: Ha! Well, after my last two plays (both of which dealt with outlandish subjects) people know me pretty well by now, which means the looks have gone from "Uh, what?" to "Oh, you."

What inspires you?

SEAN: People who are genuinely strange and funny. Quiet people that can't help but see and speak in their own worlds. Tall strange aliens that you have to go and stand next to in order to hear their jokes. Five year olds who make grownups laugh. Two year olds who are afraid of nothing.

MAC: I used to get inspiration from inside my self, my own inner emotional life. Thank God I don't do that as much anymore, that's rough. Now I get inspiration chiefly from genre forms - science fiction, horror, noir - and from news stories. As a result the plays have gotten a lot more enjoyable, both to write and (I think) to watch.

What other artists/shows are you looking forward to in the next few months?

SEAN: The Mad Ones "Samuel and Alisdair". "Yosemite" at Rattlestick. Flux Theatre Ensemble’s "Menders”. The return of my favorite Shakespeare production EVER Boomerang Theatre Company’s "Much Ado About Nothing". Ian W. Hill's plays at The Brick. If I could convince the entire theater world to start their plays at 9 PM, then every night I'd put my kids down and go see a show.

MAC: As soon as I get a day off from ADVANCE MAN, I'm headed to Catherine Trieschmann's HOW THE WORLD BEGAN, which I saw an amazing reading of. I'm also chomping at the bit to see Flux Theater Ensemble's MENDERS and a possible revival of a James Comtois play I've been hearing rumors of.

Advance Man (Part One of the Honeycomb Trilogy) will run from January 12 - 29th as part of BFG Collective's six month long residency at The Secret Theatre (44 02 23rd Street, Long Island City).

Part Two: Blast Radius, will run March 29th - April 15th and Part Three: Sovereign, will run June 14th - July 1st. Tickets are $18 / $15 for students and seniors.

Photos:
1.Actor/Producer Sean Williams
2. Sean Williams, Jason Howard, Becky Byers, David Rosenblatt and Kristen Vaughan
3. Playwright Mac Rogers
4. Abraham Makaney and Becky Byers
5. Abraham Makaney
6. Alien Pod!
7. David Rosenblatt and Sean Williams
8. David Rosenblatt
9. Sean Williams and Kristen Vaughan
10. Sean Williams, Jason Howard and Becky Byers
Photo Credit: Deborah Alexander

2011-12-10T14:48:00.008-05:00

"I was ruined by hippie chicks and bohemian girls. At this point, it became clear that I could either be a creative artist or a Modern Orthodox Jew..."

-Larry Kunofsky

Playwright

You have a religious background, can you tell me about that?

It's weird to think of a playwright as someone who was religious, isn't it? I'm not entirely sure on a conscious level why that is, but as I was processing your question, it hit me in a wave, objectively. Theater uses ritual and provides a place for community, which is very similar to religion, and yet so many plays - and so many of MY plays - have naked people in them, and the 7 words you can't say on television, and all kind of violations of the Ten Commandments. So there is a tension there.

I was raised in the Modern Orthodox Jewish tradition. Often, when I when I tell people this, all they hear is "Orthodox," and they picture me as a youth running around in a black suit, black hat, and peyes (those curly side-curls of hair that Chasidic men have). But although Modern Orthodoxy involves a deep commitment to Judaism (keeping strictly Kosher; not working on the Sabbath or other Holy Days; praying three times a day, all of which were a huge part of my earlier life), it also allows for a life within a larger community, rather than a life overtly apart from mainstream society, the way that the ultra-Orthodox Chasidim who clearly live an insular, hermetic life.

My dad was a dentist and my mom was his receptionist (who also ran his business) and although they were deeply proud of their religion, they appeared like a typical middle aged couple, and through their work, they developed close friendships with people from outside their community. My dad wore a yarmulke in our neighborhood, but not at work. My mom covered her hair, but only in synagogue. I always wore a yarmulke until I stopped being religious. But I was a fairly typical suburban kid. I listened to cool music. I went to the movies a lot. And I watched A LOT of TV. And it was on TV that I saw the American Playhouse televised broadcast of The House Of Blue Leaves when I was 15, which inspired me to become a playwright.

I went to a yeshiva all through grade school, where there was equal focus on the secular subjects like Math and English as there was on the religious subjects like Bible study and Talmud. I was a total true believer until I was around 19 and I loved all the stories of The Bible.

My project, THE GENESIS TAPESTRIES, which is a cycle of plays inspired by The Book of Genesis (of which the play I currently have up, The Myths We Need - or - How To Begin, is the first part) probably began as a seed of an idea when I was still in yeshiva. In third grade, I played Hagar, banished into the desert, (I wore my mom's wig and acted my heart out!) and even then I made up stories that were based on the Old Testament, just as I created stories based on my favorite superheroes.

I thought these biblical texts were so imaginative and dark and weird. Even when I was deeply immersed in religion, I was always a little shocked that we were supposed to look at the main characters of the Old Testament as bastions of Jewish ethics, since all the characters were so deeply flawed (which made them so interesting to me). When I read The Old Testament now, it seems like a very political text, dealing mainly in tribalism. I'm not trying to disparage these texts, but I never cease to be amazed by how Jacob tricks his brother and the Israelites smite all the other tribes, and how the apparent message is, this is what the Jews had to do to survive. (And maybe that's true, but I don't know if I feel so great about that, personally.) The other thing that always amazes me when I reread The Old Testament is how paternal, cranky, needy, bi-polar, and mean God is in these texts. This definitely comes up in my play.

When did you start to move into another direction (or however you want to call it) "branch out" so to speak?

I was 19. I was encouraged to find a Nice Jewish Girl to marry. But all the Nice Jewish Girls I knew were looking to marry a lawyer. I know how hateful this sounds! (I'm sure it was only true within the lens of an extremely limited worldview of a 19-year-old.) But it became immediately clear to me in college that a lot of arty, literary, film-geeky, and theater-immersed girls - most of whom were not Nice Jewish Girls - seemed to be interested in what I had to say and what I wanted to do. And that was it. I was ruined by hippie chicks and bohemian girls. At this point, it became clear that I could either be a creative artist or a Modern Orthodox Jew. Here in the present, as a full-scale adult, I don't believe that this need be true. But it felt true to me at the time. So I made the choice I made. So it was sex first. And then art. And then food. I remember eating my first non-Kosher hot dog and how it felt like dropping acid. But that might have something to do with the mysterious ingredients of non-Kosher hot dogs.

You have said (or I read) that you are more Dionysian (or was it hedonistic - I can't remember) How do you balance or integrate the two - particularly in the beginning? And not to get Barbara Walters on your ass (but if you cry it's cool, no one can see), did you have to reconcile feelings of shame of guilt in negotiating the two?

Micheline, you can go Barbara Walters on my ass any time. I'll tell you what kind of tree I would be. I'll cry about my not winning an Oscar, whatever you need.

I referred to myself as hedonistic in another interview to illustrate how secular I am. But I don't want to suggest to people that I have showgirls pouring chocolate over my naked body at orgies on a regular basis. That only happened a couple times.

But I must admit that even though I gave up being religious a long time ago, I still get a visceral thrill at being purely secular in so many ways. It's liberating, as if I've finally come into my own when I gave up my religious practice. That doesn't mean I have negative views of religious people - I actually have a deep respect for those who use religion to guide them towards an ethical life and towards a sustainable and nurturing community. I'm just not one of those people, and I'm at peace with not being one of those people and still get greater and greater joy at discovering who I am apart from all that.

I felt tremendous guilt and shame about disappointing my parents when I gave up religion, but in retrospect, I view my disappointing them as an important stage of growing up. Both my parents are gone now and even though it always made them sad that I didn't feel the same joy in religion as they did, I think they lived long enough to realize that this was about me coming into my own as well.

My play deals a lot with the shame that Adam & Eve felt at their own bodies once they "knew" each other, and the shame that God makes them feel, and this is the part of the ancient story that makes me angry. We should never feel shame or guilt about our own bodies or our own nature, but we do need to develop ethics and morality in order to guide us once we discover who we are and what we're capable of. Organized religion has always tried to govern people through shame and guilt, and I think this is terrible. But at the same time, when I see what world leaders and CEOs have done (and often in the so-called name of God, perversely), I question where their guilt and shame is.

Everything in life is about balance. If we feel too much guilt and shame, we end up hating ourselves and we then treat others through that shame, guilt, hatred as if it were the very engine of life. But we need to develop a conscience, and maybe some degree of guilt and shame is necessary for that. (ie, if I treated someone like that, I could never look at myself in the mirror again.) Balance. It's not an easy thing.

You had mentioned in your wonderful interview with Jody Christopherson for the New York Theatre Review that the myths of the bible are there to help us grapple with issues of gender. Can you expand on that?

Gender is a fluid construct and Purple Rep, my theatre company, was designed, in part, to present plays that explore this fluidity. Within mainstream society, we still view gender through a very rigid framework, and this makes the story of Adam & Eve that much more relevant today. One can look at The Old Testament in much the same way that we look at Shakespeare's plays, when it comes to gender. Women are subjugated in these texts, and given a raw deal. But I think it's important to look at these texts not just as a history of gender inequality, but as a key to how difference itself is always viewed as dubious or threatening by we humans, a species predisposed to suspicipon.

For anyone reading this interview who suspects that my play must be very egg-heady, now would be a good time to point out that The Myths We Need is all about sex, and there's sex in all kinds of variety. There's an underlying homo-eroticism between God and man in my play. And Lilith and Eve totally get it on.

What I love about the story of Genesis is how, when Adam and Eve make love, they "know" each other. The idea that love is knowledge and that knowledge is love is a deeply beautiful concept to me. But they get punished for their knowledge, and Eve much more so than Adam. And so I wrote a play that addresses this gender inequality through a contemporary lens. The main character is The Kid (who is basically Adam, the first man) , and his journey is to discover what kind of man he is. Ultimately, he discovers that the best part of himself as a man is his love of a woman. And so Adam & Eve find paradise once they're expelled from paradise, as they build an equality between them.

Do you pray?

I must confess that I do. I don't consider myself religious, and I don't even really consider myself spiritual, but I have been unable to escape the need for prayer. Sometimes I pray for very specific things for myself. This kind of prayer always makes me feel a little guilty, since the idea of asking God for a good review seems deeply unseemly to me. I do pray for justice for the oppressed and peace for the whole world. I pray for people I know who are sick or suffering. I pray out of joy when I'm happy. This might detract further from the notion that I'm just a secular hedonist, but I have thrown off all trappings of organized religion, so some might even consider me a heretic. Which I like. That sounds so badass!

I think of prayer as a kind of art form, just like playwriting. And when I'm inspired along these lines, I go at it. It's always by myself, usually in my apartment. I don't go to any places of worship. I write in cafes, in libraries, etc., and along those lines, I pray wherever the mood hits me. It's very internal. It's like when I'm coming up with an idea for a play. I walk around in a daze. I've definitely run into people I know on the street when I was coming up with play ideas or praying, and it's clear from the look on the other person's face that I'd been talking to myself in the middle of the street, and that they suspect that I must be off my meds. So all of this might just be symptoms of my mental illness. But, as with writing plays, prayers provide me solace. So crazy with solace is better than sane unconsoled, I say.

What is your concept of God?

I do believe in God. Not as an old dude with a beard, but as the source for beauty and joy and life itself. Whenever I feel joy or see the beauty in the world, it heals me from my revert-to-default existential dread that the universe is governed by randomness.

As a creative artist, I think of the part in Genesis that claims that God created man in His image, and I transfer that to Man creating Art in God's image. Somebody else might claim that this is making graven images. But those people are too uptight. Whenever I hear The Beatles' Abbey Road or watch a great Looney Tunes cartoon, or read a short story like John Cheever's The Swimmer or Delmore Schwartz's In Dreams Begin Responsibility, I think that there must be a God. Because humans suck so much, so much of the time, with their wars and their greeds, and their bigotries, and their abuses of power, etc., and so through art, I feel that humanity has been given a glimmer of a reflection of God that might redeem our species.

Purple Rep, in addition to producing Myths, has commissioned a group of fantastic playwrights for the Dark Night Serials Series. Can you talk a little about that? Is there a theme involved? How did you chose your playwrights?Are you deeply entrenched in the burlesque scene? Have you ever done burlesque?

I was hell bent on having Purple Rep present The Myths We Need this month, because it was the only time this year that I'd have the opportunity to work with director Jose Zayas, who really wanted to direct this play, but who is much too sought-after to pin down for too long. So I made this production happen at the spur-of-the-moment. But how could Purple Rep just do one show at a time? We're supposed to be a playwrights' collective that produces plays in rep. And so I devised PURPLE REP PRESENTS: THE DARK NIGHT SERIALS SERIES, which is a weekly, Monday night variety show, in which 8 full-length plays by 8 playwrights will be produced in serialized form. So if you come to the Series on any given Monday night, you'll see four scenes from the 8 plays and you tune in next week to see another line-up. And so it's fun to come to just one evening of the Series, but if you keep up with the series, you will see all these plays in their entirety. And that's my way of putting the Rep back into Purple Rep.

The 8 playwrights in question are Johnna Adams; Charlotte Miller; August Schulenburg; James Comtois; Brendan Burke; Kristen Palmer; Adam Szymkowicz; and... who's the other one...? Oh yeah: me. I chose these playwrights because I knew and loved their work. As curator of the event, I curated the playwrights, not the plays. I gave the playwrights absolute autonomy of which of their plays they'd select, who their directors would be, and who they'd cast. My only instructions have been that the plays need to be broken down into 15 minute installments and that the actors have to be off-book.

We had our first installment last Monday, and it was gorgeous! The level of commitment among all the artists was just remarkable.Everybody should come see the next installment this Monday. Oh, did I mention that this event is FREE to the public? I don't know about your readers, Micheline, but I, for one, tend to get the blues on Mondays. Nothing beats the blues better than this venue. I guarantee it. If you show up on Monday and are not ecstatically happy after the show, I'll give you your money back. Which is very difficult to do, since the event is free, but still...!

Along with the plays, this event features musicians, performances artists and the like. So far, we've been a little light on burlesque, which is a shame, because I love burlesque. I think it's the next chapter in independent theatre. But I remain, sadly, an outsider in this world. I hope that as Purple Rep grows, we will involve more and more burlesque artists (women burlesquers; men burlesquers; transgendered burlesquers; burlesquers of every stripe and every body type!). I have a dream of commissioning four playwrights and four burlesque artists to collaborate on four plays. But that's for somewhere down the road. I've never done burlesque myself. I tend to suspect that large audiences would prefer that I keep my clothes on, but I do secretly wish I could be a burlesque artist. Maybe in another life. Or maybe in this one, but later. I'd probably need to gain a sense of rhythm. And lose about fifteen pounds.

Are you a good bartender?

I tend bar at every performance of my play and at the Dark Night Serials in order to drum up some extra cash for the company. I'm like Isaac from the Love Boat. I pour and smile and people seem to like me. So yeah.

If Eve offered you the apple, would you take a bite?

Oh, sweetie, she offered me a bite a long time ago. And I bit. I bit and bit and bit. I ate it all.

The Myths We Need - or - How to Begin was written by Larry Kunofsky, directed by Jose Zayas, and features Luke Forbes, Anna Lamadrid, Annie Henk, and Hugh Sinclair. You can catch it at The Monkey @ 37 West 26th Street. Tickets are $18. Shows are Thurs-Sun 8, 9, 10, 11 and 15, 16, 17, and 18, all at 8pm.

To purchase tickets, bite into this.

Surviving Feedback: Playwright Cecilia Copeland Shares Her Thoughts

2011-12-04T21:22:00.013-05:00

"When I hear, 'What you should do is… if you changed that… what you could try is… what would make that better is if you… the easy way to fix that is just…' when I hear that it takes all of my strength not to say, 'Shut the F**K up and write your own play!'"

-Cecilia Copeland
Playwright, Teacher

Last week, I had been talking to some playwrights about giving and receiving feedback. Playwright A said that it was more helpful for them to hear what's not working and hear it straight from the hip ("too much pussy-footing") whereas Playwright B felt that certain types of critical and prescriptive feedback derailed them and wanted to learn how to create a more structured response. Cecilia Copeland was giving a lecture on the subject so I asked her to share her notes with Theaterspeak.

-Micheline Auger
Theaterspeak

How to take a how to take feedback and make it useful or steps on surviving workshop and feedback sessions.

Let me preface this by saying there are all different types of workshops and feedback sessions. Some are designed to hold a play up to a particular rubric and see if it meets the criteria. For instance, identifying the Protagonist and pointing out if we understand the dénouement at the end, but those can ignore why such things have become part of the natural way we tell stories. Simply locating the identifying pillars of classic Aristotelian structure does not address whether or not they are functioning with artful impact.

Other roundtables are little more than pitch sessions, and that’s what they are meant to be! Some writers want to sit there and have other people, possibly other writers, directors or producers tell them what they should do. They hash it out together as a team. I’m not poo pooing that, it's just different. However, when it comes to Sole Authorship the best kind of feedback has nothing to do with hearing a pitch or a suggestion. In fact my immediate response when I hear, “What you should do is… if you changed that… what you could try is… what would make that better is if you… the easy way to fix that is just…” when I hear that it takes all of my strength not to say, “Shut the F**K up and write your own play!”

So for me, Step One: Do Not Attack the people giving you their opinions.

Aside from refraining from violence, this means don’t answer them unless you must. If you are talking, you aren’t listening to what other people have to say and this is a feedback session for your PLAY, not your soapbox session. The play speaks for itself and if it didn’t, you won’t learn that by talking for it. Try to remember it’s just an opinion, even if it’s Edward Albee’s opinion, he’s still just one dude. This doesn’t mean go ahead and let a feedback session deteriorate into a nonsense conversation on minutia because that’s also a waste of time.

If things veer too far away from your play, then step in and say something. The best thing is to have a couple of questions which are focused on where you want feedback. This will help steer things, and I suggest giving them to your director or dramaturg beforehand so they can help bring the conversation back to the play if it gets out of control.

Step Two: Take notes. This will help you not speak.

Organize your notes if you can. I’m a little OCD and that doesn’t mean my floor is clean, but it does mean that I try to have a method for everything that is usually based in a combination of avoiding screwing up and saving time. I don’t always follow it, like Alice in Wonderland giving herself advice, but I try. For Instance, I will get the list of the names of all the actors, the sm, the director, the artistic director, the artistic associates, potential guests and others giving feedback, and write down their first names or initials on the first page before the feedback even starts. Then I’ll jot down who is speaking when they start. If you follow that method, you will know who said what, and if somebody said something really helpful you will be able to find them later to squeeze their brain for more brilliant info. It will also help you to Consider the Source.

Step Three: Consider the Source.

The best notes I’ve received are those that come from people whose work I really admire and like. This doesn’t mean the note was easy to take, it just means it was a good note for the play. Usually, if there is someone in the room whose work I don’t connect with, they are the first person to give me a note that I don’t connect with. This is not a coincidence. Art is personal. Notes I got on one play included a searing comment card that said, “You have tainted the world ‘love’ for me forever. Your play is the most offensive thing I have ever seen. I was disgusted!!!!” Other feedback on the same play included, “It’s vampire lesbian pulp.” and “Let me start off my comments by saying, I’m not a misogynist…”, (Which clearly if you have to say that, you probably are.) An agent I adore said, “It’s just not for me.”

And then, I heard some things from some people whose work I deeply respect, “The word love SHOULD be tainted! Don’t give up! I see why they have such a hard time with it, but don’t listen to them.” And another pulled me aside and said, “You have a very beautiful, complex, deep work there. It’s frightening and poetic. It’s an important play.” A colleague who is a director said, “As soon as I can get the funding I want to produce it in Dallas. I have an actress who would be perfect in the lead. I LOVE this play!” A theater in New York, “We really want to produce this. It fits our mission perfectly! Let’s grab a coffee and talk about what to do next.”

Find opinions you trust and salt and pepper them with the dissonant voices. Consensus is not the goal, but concert is.

Step Four: Hear the note through the note. All notes have to be translated.

Note: "There was no clear strong protagonist in this piece."...(and that was bad.)

The problem with that kind of note is that there are good plays, excellent plays, that don't have one clear protagonist (in the conventional sense). The Colored Museum, Romeo and Juliette, Waiting for Godot, and many others.

Okay, here's a possible translation of the note: "It was hard for me to get into the play because I didn't have a strong way in with a character I liked or rooted for so I didn't identify with it or invest in it... If you want to get this play produced you might think about giving it a more classic structure to help people get it..."

Another Note: “You should have Jennie more integrated in the action in the second act.”... (Jennie should x,y,or z)

That’s a pitch. The translation, “Jennie disappeared in the second act and I wasn’t expecting that and didn’t know what to make of it... I spent time wondering why she had gone and felt confused as to what that had to do with the play, because it seemed to be just convenient or forgetful rather than meaningful and so it took me out of the action. So then I was looking at Jennie and wondering why she isn’t valuable as a person, and is that like me, and what societal factors play into that, and how does a person have value? I don’t know if that’s your play or not but I connected with Jennie so when she went away, that’s where I went.”

Just saying “Bring Jennie back” is a like putting a Band-Aid blindly on cut before doing a diagnostic. No one can do a diagnostic on the extent of the cut except the playwright who, has to figure out how deep it goes, if it’s infected, or what the correct treatment is for the injury. Maybe it had already been fixed, but not well enough, it might need amputation or stitches and not just a Band-Aid. Maybe Jennie was supposed to disappear, and it means something that she does, but the audience Didn’t Get It.

The goal is to be able to hear someone say, “Bring Jennie back more at the end.” And to write down, “A.E.: Jennie? Second Act? Disappears?” (And whatever expletives you want.)

Step Five: Isolated vs Popcorn and The Power Dynamic in feedback.

We neither write in a vacuum nor do we get feedback in a vacuum. The real truth lives in an audience where it’s dark. Nobody knows who is laughing or crying at what and when, while the show is happening. It just happens. Popcorn responses are ostensibly organic and that’s part of what makes Theatre such a beautiful thing. This is not withstanding the politics of ticket prices and other social factors, but the group hierarchy is lessened by the lighting and seating. What we are left with in the theater is just anonymous persons responding to something as individuals and as a collective.

No room is free of hierarchy. Not everyone will agree with a note and the dynamic of a room is always weighted so that when certain people speak everyone will nod and go, “Hm… yes… ooo… that’s right… that was a smart thing to say…” We are all human beings and when an important person in the room says anything that sounds even a little smart everyone else in the room jumps up and down in their chars like lemmings off a cliff to get that VIP to notice their ass kissing. It’s instinctual. I’m not judging it. Everybody does it, but as a playwright just be aware of it.

There will also be times when a popcorn style agreement like the one above happens spontaneously and it comes from an unexpected source, PAY ATTENTION! When the least powerful person timidly says something and the whole room suddenly opens up, That Is Gold! That’s a great note. It meant that a person, who was shyly struggling with their own inadequacy in the room, felt so deeply moved by something they had to share it, and then it landed like James and the Giant Peach! Conversely, when someone who is of great import says a note that gets no popcorn as they usually do or someone is brave enough to contradict it, Pay Attention to that as well! It could be just someone wanting to get noticed as tough or controversial, or it could be followed by another popcorn response of minds opening. This doesn’t mean discount what powerful smart people say just because other people jump on it to be liked, because they will often say things that are helpful, but maybe not always.

This must make it tough for really powerful playwrights to get honest feedback, especially when it comes from people who are nervously hoping to get a job or prove something. Fortunately, I’m not so powerful at this moment and so nobody ever feels the need to kiss my ass in a feedback session, ever. It also means that for me and other emerging writers, people feel more comfortable being harsh. We don’t have the gravitas to keep their egos in check. It’s just human nature and it’s often not a conscious thing. Know that, and try to chill about it. I’m saying we’re all people with egos, feelings, hopes, and dreams. We all want to write a great play, do a great role, direct an amazing show, and build great Theatre! If you can listen to feedback with that in mind, then it will help you hear what the note is instead of the words said or the tone used.

Step Six: My Play vs Your Play.

When most people give notes they want to help you make your play better, but they can’t read your mind. In that moment in the room, each person heard one particular play and are giving notes on the play they heard, and what they think it was and should be, but it's not theirs yet. The play becomes theirs when they see it in performance, just like a role becomes an actress's role when she plays it. On the page. it belongs to the author, and in the mind, it belongs to the audience or the reader, once it’s finished.

The best gift they can give you to help you write your play is to show you what they saw and heard, and what it made them think. Afterward, you can decide if it sounds like your play. Armed with good feedback, you can head into a strong rewrite and decide if you want to bring Jennie back, cut her from the play, have her walk around in the second act with a gag on her face and only utter nonsense, or if you want her to grow a set of winged stilettos and watch her climb then ice pick, skip, jump, and float her way to Finland.

Hopefully those survival tips were helpful. I've heard stories of lost plays and watched in horror as playwrights wrote themselves out of good unique plays to land in BORING mediocrity. I've had to take myself back an entire draft and start there because of all the advice I felt compelled to take after a feedback session.

I'm endlessly grateful to anyone who has ever given me feedback. Whether I used it or not, ‘I heard you and am grateful you listened and cared enough the share your opinion. Thank you.’
THE END

Theaterspeak is interested in a variety of opinions and voices, so if you have something you'd like to add to the conversation, give a hollah...

One Hot Kitchen Opens at the Metropolis Opera Project - and it's HOT!

2011-12-02T11:15:00.014-05:00

"I first met Paris as a temporarily homeless waif of six years old, an evacuee from the LA earthquake...It’s funny that now Paris is a hot up and coming singer/songwriter and generally awesome bride-to-be, and she’s in my opera playing—what else—a homeless waif..."

- David Caudle
Playwright

What is One Hot Kitchen?

One Hot Kitchen is a ninety-minute slice of life comedy-drama, with five vignettes in a stack of apartments in a 5-floor Hell's Kitchen walk-up. The form is Opera Electronica.

What is Opera Electronica?

Opera Electronica is a crazy amazing new form that’s being pioneered right now and in this piece by composer Kristin Hevner Wyatt (pictured right). Kristin explains it like this: “My background is classical music but my itunes is packed with hip-hop, dance, electronica, dj remixes as well. This piece in particular, uses the colors and technology of current electronica dance music as its base, while featuring operatic/musical theater vocal lines. Both genres aim to do the same thing: tell a story. To me, combining electronica and opera allows for a unique expansion of expression in both respective genres.”

Kristin’s as talented as she is smart, and for my part, the sound she’s creating has a vibrancy, an immediacy and a relevance that can draw a whole new audience into the world of opera and all its forms.

How did it come about?

OHK was originally a play called Hell’s Cuisinart, that I wrote in the mid-90s when I moved into a Hell’s Kitchen walk-up. It was produced at the Samuel Beckett, and in Miami and L.A., and got a great response. The opera came about when my friend Zachary James, Metropolis Opera Project’s Founding Artistic Director, brought Kristin to my play South Beach Rapture in last year’s FringeNYC. Afterward, they asked me to write something for the company, and when we discussed possibilities, Hell’s Cuisinart just seemed like a great fit. In adapting the libretto, I also rewrote the play substantially, bringing it up to the current date and exploring new themes or rather the same themes after twelve extra years of living.

Who is involved?

As mentioned, the amazing Zach James and M.O.P., and composers Kristin Hevner Wyatt and Daniel Wyatt. The director is Norm Johnson (pictured right), who took a sabbatical from teaching at Ithaca College to work on this. Several of his former students are in the show and they are a talented bunch! (Zach is also from I. C., and has crazy pipes but unfortunately he’s too busy playing Lurch in the Addams Family to perform in the show.) Soprano Caroline Selia and I worked on a project last year with Kristin, a sort of trial run for our collaboration, and Caroline and I share a birthday the day after we close, so that’s special. And we have a great texture to the piece in the form of soulful rock/guitar & vocals with Paris Carney.

I first met Paris as a temporarily homeless waif of six years old, an evacuee from the LA earthquake. I gave her and her family a place to freshen up, and got to know her lovely mom, Marti, who’s become a great friend. It’s funny that now Paris is a hot up and coming singer/songwriter and generally awesome bride-to-be, and she’s in my opera playing—what else—a homeless waif.

How was it developed?

I developed the libretto of OHK working closely with Kristin. As I began to distill and stylize the language, she would give structural notes based purely on her musical ear. In every case, her notes led me to great discoveries about content, character, and pacing. I brought the work into the Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group at Primary Stages as it came up, and got some great feedback there. Norm Johnson also had some valuable insights as we discussed casting. It’s been an amazing process.

Tell me about the Metropolis Opera Project.

M.O.P. is a dedicated, fierce group of folks with major pipes, doing important new, relevant work. I really think their work can help the genre not only persevere but thrive and grow in the next generation. Their mission statement talks about “creating the opportunity to redefine opera and break down the stereotypes about the genre. With the philosophy that opera is simply telling a story with words and music, Metropolis Opera Project strives to break down the wall between theatre and opera. Metropolis Opera Project commissions composers to collaborate on new works, encouraging styles of music rarely used in an operatic setting, including electronica, rap, hip-hop, folk and rock.”

What's yer background?

My background is actually really eclectic. I’m a fine art painter with an MFA in Set and Costume Design (UConn) It took awhile for me to really focus and discover that my main medium is words. Still to pay the bills, I paint paintings, scenery and costumes for bway, tv and film. I also sang tenor in a few choirs, and love music, so this entree into opera has been fabulous.

Plus, I'm writing a musical called Show People about the teenaged NYU student who founded the Actors Fund in 1882. I just received a grant for that one from the Anna Sosenko Assist trust. Anyway, I’m grateful that I can fuel my major passion with other passions/interests like painting, and grateful too for the background I have because I know the nuts and bolts of theatre from so many different directions. This helps me see the worlds I’m creating with clarity, subtlety and confidence. My settings, for example, are always a character in my plays. The Sunken Living Room, (Samuel French) is even the title character. And in OHK, again, it’s the Kitchen, it’s Hell’s Kitchen, and if it’s too hot, you know what you gotta do, right?

In the James Liptonian tradition, what's your favorite curse word?

My favorite curse word is actually two words: “shoot fuzzy” My grandmother used to say that as a polite substitute for a couple of other choice words.

What's coming up next for ya?

Next up I believe is my play Visiting Hours premiering in New Orleans in the spring, by a new and great company called the Rising Shiners, directed by Ann Mahoney Kadar. It’s a play about a middle-aged Lesbian couple whose adult son is in trouble with the law. It’s set in my home town of Miami and is about that moment when you have to just face facts that things will never get any better than they are. I think the play speaks volumes about gay family values by depicting gay parents in a nightmare all parents dread, but sticking in there together and trying to tough it out. I think there will be a reading in NYC soon as well, but I don’t have details.

What else is inspiring you theaterwise or otherwise in the world today?

Occupation is the word these days. It’s thrilling to see the apathy of the comfortable 80s-90s and the terrified/tentative 2000s giving way to a new era of action. I was actually in Rome during their Occupy event, which became a bit dangerous as a splinter group firebombed cars and broke store windows. Most of the people were peaceful but as we’re starting to see, peace can only last so long. The movement actually speaks to the message of OHK, which is basically that where you live and what you have is not nearly as important as who you’re with and how you treat them.

Anything you want to add?

Come see OHK, and if anyone feels like supporting a great company in a major undertaking, go to rockethub.com and search for One Hot Kitchen. Depending on the size of the donation, you could get a song written just for you!

One Hot Kitchen plays through Thursdays thru Sunday now to December 11, 2011 at You can get your tickets here!

Madness Will Keep You Writing (and Acting and Directing and Watching).

2011-10-29T23:34:00.016-04:00

"Anything can happen in a Madness..."

- Founder, Artistic Director Cecilia Copeland

What was the inspiration for Madness?

Madness started as part of the program at Ohio University. It was then carried to the Playwright's Center by OU Alumni Reginald Edmund when he went there for a McKnight Fellowship. When I came back to New York, I wanted to bring it here because it's a great way to keep writing even when there isn't a lot of time or money.
Why the name?

Anything can happen in a Madness. Five minutes before curtain, a playwright can get seized by a necessary script change and give a player new pages. Sometimes while on stage, doing a wild physical bit, some pages can go flying and then the players have to scramble and share a script or get the pages back from the audience. A breakout script and performance can suddenly bring everyone to tears. One time a kid's retainer popped out of his mouth and launched into the front row! This kind of stuff always happens... it's Madness!
What's the format? How does it work?

The writers get the theme one week before the actual show. This theme is proposed by the Featured Guest and is something they are inspired by and want to see explored in an evening of theatre. All the playwrights then have seven days to write a seven minute piece, cast it, rehearse it, and bring it in on its feet, script in hand.

The final draft of the play is due the day before the show and the Featured Guest works with me and my consulting producer, Lanie Zipoy and managing director, Judith Leora to curate the night. It's important to the overall mission of Madness that the work is cohesive and the audience goes on a journey. An hour and a half before the show, we run a quick cue to cue for lights and sound, and then like magic, the show explodes! It's high energy and lots of fun.What's your background?

I'm a Midwestern Mutt. My family hates it when I say that, but it's true in every aspect. I'm a half-Catholic, half-Jewish, Welsh, Mediterranean, Latin Mix, who is a permanent resident of Australia and calls NYC my home. I lived in Israel as a kid under very strange circumstances, which landed my family in the public eye for a number of years. It's a long story and one I'm hesitant to go into without at least one martini.

For my artistic background, I was trained as a classical ballerina and then went on to dance for VH1 back when they did that sort of thing... circa the 90's. Having practiced Ukidokan Martial Arts, I'm a huge fan of fight scenes and smartly written action movies. I started writing short stories and non-fiction pieces when I was in grade school. None of those are published, so don't look for them. I've been writing poetry off and on since I was about 15.

As an actress, I studied at the Stella Adler Studio and that's what led me to writing plays. Everything in my life ultimately led me to becoming a dramatist. I studied the craft at the Playwright's Workshop at the University of Iowa as an undergrad and then Ohio University for the MFA.

What's your favorite curse word?

Fuck.

What's coming up for Madness?

November 7th we will be at IATI Theater on the 4th Arts Block, which was recently renamed Ellen Stewart Way for the founder of La MaMa Ellen Stewart. And YOU Micheline, yes, Madness is thrilled to have you writing with us! Jason Holtham (pictured) is our Featured Guest and will set the theme. I'm sitting out this time. All the Founding Member Playwrights take turns giving up their seat to make sure we are in it for all of us and not just to get our own name out there. We're a community first and foremost.

How can people help or get involved?

Post something on our FB wall. Contact our Managing Director, Judith Leora (pictured below, left) or Consulting Producer Lanie Zipoy. Or just shoot me an email.What do you see happening in the theater scene right now that inspires or frustrates you?

I'm inspired by the work of certain companies, because it's a team that makes good theatre. LAByrinth has great writers, actors, directors and designers. Lot's of Madness people were scouted at LAB events. New York Stage and Film is an organization that consistently takes risks and is jam packed with brains and talent.

ESPA at Primary Stages is a hotbed for all things theatre right now. Atlantic Theatre Company is opening the door to new work in exciting ways. Ensemble Studio Theatre continually generates top notch work. IATI Theater is about to undergo a huge renovation which took years of commitment to fund. The Public Theater remains a stalwart of support for all kinds of good work. INTAR is getting some well deserved great reviews.As for the frustrating things... sure I would like to see more gender equity across the board. It comes in little ways too, things like violence onstage or how one's sex is represented in a play seem to be different discussions when the writer is a woman. This is a reality, but I would like to discuss that reality instead of pretending it's not the case.

What shows coming up are you excited about seeing?

Atmosphere of Memory at LAB! I'm also very jazzed to see the new Almodovar film. I saw him speak at the NYFF which was great, but I couldn't get a ticket to his movie so I have to wait for the general release.Anything you'd like to add?Thank you for joining the Madness family and congratulations on the One-Minute Play Fest and the Write-In!

Madness is Monday, November 7, 2011 at 7:30pm at IATI: 64 East 4th Street, NYC. Pay-What-You-Can at the door. Refreshments will also be available.

Madness Writers for this event include:
J. Holtham, (Guest Artistic Producing Playwright),*Ryan Dowler, *Judith Leora, (Managing Director), *Lisa Ramirez, *Molly Hagan, Charlotte Miller, Mel Nieves, Jeffrey Pfeiffer, Micheline Auger. Also participating: *Lanie Zipoy (Consulting Producer), *Cecilia Copeland, (Founder and Artistic Director) (*) Founding Member Writers

Pictured:
1. Warren G. Stiles & Molly Hagan
2. Jeffrey James Keyes and Micheline Auger
3. Dev Bondarin & Cheryl L. Davis (Guest Artistic Producing Playwright for Oct '11)
4. Cecilia Copeland
5. J. Holtham
6. Judith Leora & Kimberly Ver Steeg
7. Haydn Diaz, Cecilia Copeland & Winston Estevez

Keith Josef Adkins on theThe New Black Fest Which Celebrates Diversity, Inclusion and Community and Conversation

2011-10-13T09:51:00.008-04:00

"Storytelling is primal. It's how humanity gives testament to its existence. It's always universal."

What is the New Black Fest?

The New Black Fest is a theater festival that celebrates, interrogates and advocates for the diversity within the African Diaspora. The New Black Fest is committed to challenging black audiences (as well as all audiences) with stories from the global black experience that are often neglected, unmined or considered too insurgent.

The New Black Fest is a year-long event that provides panel discussions, curated readings as well as a new series titled the American Slavery Project which showcases plays about the period of American slavery written by black writers.

Each ASP reading is accompanied by a panel discussion from noted history scholars. Our aim with the American Slavery Project is to shy away from the standard romanticized slavery stories often found on the stages of mainstream theaters and provide the theater community with varied and diverse stories from the multiple perspectives that make up the black historical experience. However, in the fall of every year, The New Black Fest celebrates itself with a festival of plays, discussions and music in various locations in NYC.

How did the idea come about?

The idea for The New Black Fest emerged out of working in a community of black theater artists who were spending a great deal of their time waiting for their larger institutions to qualify, jump-start or anoint their careers. Not to mention the lack of diversity in story and talent on the American stage. So, in 2010, while attending Arena Stage's New Play Institute's Black Playwright Convening, I mentioned to the conveners that I wanted to start a festival.

During that convening many of us were citing instances of marginalization, institutional racism and/or lack of opportunities, and most of us gave testament to instances where theaters ignored our plays because the plays didn't fit into a particular (and comfortable or commercially-viable: a la August Wilson) black aesthetic.

So, again, in 2010, I mentioned to the conveners that I wanted to start a theater festival that celebrated our diversity and it has grown like wild fire. J. Holtham (pictured left) and Jocelyn Prince jumped on board as co-artistic directors with similar interests. Lynn Nottage and Suzan-Lori Parks signed up as advisory members. Our community of like-minded artists is still growing.

What's your background?

I'm a playwright who also acts. I earned my MFA in playwriting from the University of Iowa. In the last few years I've been a professional and full-time blogger for TheRoot.com, an online newspaper supported by the Washington Post and Newsweek. I've also worked as a television writer and screenwriter.

What are your goals (and dreams) for the festival?

Our immediate goal is to continue to celebrate diverse theater artists within the Diaspora and also continue to build community and audiences. Our long-term goal is become a development and producing collective. We want to workshop and possibly mount plays.

How can people help/get involved?

People can get involved by volunteering, but even more importantly, by attending our events and spreading the word. Storytelling is primal. It's how humanity gives testament to its existence. It's always universal. We should all be engaged in each other's stories, equally. People can help by donating. At this point, most our funding comes from fellow theater artists (and friends of fellow theater artists). Any amount will help.

Whats your vision for the theater landscape in the near future?

It's weird. Although I'm one of the many casualties of the global economic downfall, I do like what it's forcing people (and institutions) to do. It's making us reconsider our priorities. It's making us go back to the basics. It's making us become more honest and courageous in our storytelling. In truth, all theaters need is a play, actors and a director with minimal tech support. If we get back to the primal need of storytelling, then we can relinquish the bells and whistles and get to the story.

We can make theater affordable for all. If we can get back to the bare bones basics and make theater affordable, well, then we can produce anything, anywhere. There will no longer be a need to depend on the whims and interests (and anxieties) of white, middle-class, middle-age subscribers and audiences. The future of theater should be for everyone.
Who and what is inspiring you right now?

The world and all of its many changes, transitions and undeniable truths.

You can join the New Black Fest team and artists for drinks and fellowship this Friday, October 14th at Nectar Wine Bar in Harlem (with Special New Black Fest Happy Hour 7pm - 8pm!)

Then Saturday, join the New Black Conversation: "The Future of Progressive Culture in a Capitalist Society," hosted by The Festival of the New Black Imagination with playwright Dominqiue Morisseau, music journalist Marcus Dowling.

New Black Plays and Playwrights begins Sunday Oct 16th with black Picasso by Zakiyyah Alexander at 2pm and Just Me, You and The Silence by Judith Adong at 7pm.

The conversation continues on Monday with The Struggle for Gay Rights in Africa, with Ugandan playwright Judith Adong, Dr. Cheikh Traore, UN Senior Advisor on Sexuality Diversity and more, moderated by actress/activist Bridgit Antoinette Evans at 6pm.

Sunday October 23rd, New Black Plays and Playwrights continues with Annie Bosh is Missing by Janine Nabers at 2pm, Carnaval by Nikkole Salter at 5pm and Homage 2: The Great Adventures of Slick Rick by Shaun Neblett at 7:30.

For more information on locations and times, or to make a reservation or donation, please put it here.

The Inspiration and the Pulse behind the One-Minute Play Festival

2011-10-11T11:19:00.019-04:00

"The collective voice is the thing we’re really trying to get to the core of..."

So how did you come to create the One-Minute Play Festival?

I worked with a theater company in Brooklyn, which I’m a still a member of, and we were asked to be part of a national short form theater festival at a big institutional theater in New York, which I respect very much. The idea was that everybody was going to come in from different places to collaborate, and it was sort of about this idea of radical inclusion, the idea that people were going to collaborate and be in this uncomfortable environment and force conversation and see each other work from boldly, wildly different perspectives, and I felt like it was a great idea.

And I felt like the reality of it for me, as I spent a lot of time working on this short form theater festival and getting to work at an institution that I’ve always loved, was that I didn’t learn anything. I didn’t meet anybody. I didn’t have any mind-blowing conversations. I didn’t see anybody’s work that inspired me. It was kind of disappointing. It was more of a PR stunt than an actual community event. Maybe that was my experience and other people didn’t feel that way, clearly other people didn’t, but I felt cheated out of what I had invested in. And I thought, ‘man, I think I can do a better job of creating a sense of community and I’m just this nobody kid’.

That was five years ago. Around that time, there was a class being offered called, ‘How to Make a Well Made Ten-Minute Play’, and a bunch of us were kind of married to this conversation that the culture of ten-minute play festivals kind of sucked. Most of the time, you’re either asked to write something, or as a director, someone will ask you to direct this random festival, and email you somebody’s random play, and you go off and find people and rehearse it, and bring it in, and the room is a culture of people that don’t know each other necessarily. Or, above and beyond that, they don’t have a clear goal for why they’re in that space together, and the culture of it ends up feeling like whose play is the better ten-minute play.

It also feels like a redundant process for young artists to be caught in again and again, and somebody was saying you’re watching ten ten-minute plays, or basically a hundred minutes of work, and there’s only a minute of those plays that are the thing that you’re waiting to see, and I kind of had a light-bulb (moment) based on that earlier experience being part of that festival and this conversation, and I was like, ‘oh, I get it. Why don’t we try to make a festival about those minutes of a ten-minute play?’

Cut to a month later, we were asking every playwright who we thought was good to experiment, and to look at the ten-minute play form, and distill it down to a single moment. I had no idea what was going to happen. It was a total experiment. We had no idea if anyone was going to show up, or what the deal was, and it ended up being so successful that year.

This was at the Brick?

Yeah, 2007 – we came in and there were so many actors that we literally had to keep the actors for the second part of the evening in the bar across the street and in intermission do a switch-over. Most of the playwrights showed up because they were curious. Some people thought it was a great idea. Some people thought it was a terrible idea, but everyone wanted to see what it was about, and we had seven or eight really good directors.

It really was a community event, and there was nothing at stake other than the possibility of seeing what this was. And that year not every play was admitted. We were new to the form so we didn’t have any examples of it, but it really was an inspiring event that brought people together. Everybody hung out and drank, and it really felt like a strong sense of community, and that day we decided we were going to do it again, so immediately it became an annual tradition.

Cut to a few years later, it started to get really popular. After the third incarnation, we kept moving to bigger theaters and after the third year at Here Arts Center, Kristin Marting (pictured left) from Here gave us a grant so we could be a part of their programming, which was really lovely, and was sort of like a step up from being an independent thing to part of a more legitimate structure, and it was really great for the festival.

Then I started getting interest from regional theater companies, and this one theater in particular was like, ‘pick fifty of your best plays and come up here and do like a month-long run under a LORT contract’, and I was like, ‘that’s really exciting’. It sort of became legitimate and I started planning it but it didn’t feel right, and so again, all the stuff I learned from the Lark and from other things I’ve been a part of - and I went back and thought, ‘ok, what’s the goal? Why do I do this and what’s exciting?’

I sort of went back to the basic idea of why we started this event which was to create a really inclusive community event, and if we’re not creating a community event, then what are we doing? We’re not in it to make productions, so it dawned on me that if I was to go around and tour these works, I would have to sort of bottle the lightening of what made it exciting and make this work with the artists and the playwrights in that particular town so that they have an opportunity to have a creative center.

So I started working on a unique partnership model where I started partnering with theaters, and right away people at the Playwrights Foundation were like, ‘you gotta come here!’ and a theater in L.A. that I was affiliated with was like, ‘you gotta come here and do this’. So I started partnering with theaters that either had a community-specific mission or a playwrights-based mission, or institutional theaters that have programming that specifically supported playwrights.

I started switching to this model where these theaters would hire me as a conceptual artist to come in and create a festival with their community to benefit these specific programs that immediately gave back to their communities.

So we’re saying to the playwright, ‘hey you’re writing a play for us, and you’re gifting your time, and the money and the energy and the scope of the festival is about the efficacy of what this group does and the proceeds are going – minus what it costs to produce the festival – back to their programs, so it feeds their community’.

I started in Los Angeles last year, with a company called East L.A. Rep, and I’ll tack on to that another company that I worked with which was Cornerstone and Michael Garces – they are the largest, quote unquote, community-based theater in the country, and they are an amazing organization that has an entire methodology devoted to what it means to work with people in communities.

That festival was about working in Boyle Heights in East LA, a very sort of under-served but vibrant community, that doesn’t have a lot of arts organizations and this one company was granted a space from the city and it was taken away from them, and they had to go to court to fight to get this space back, and I thought wouldn’t it be a great idea to do the festival as a kick-off for their community space, so we did.

The result of that was about ninety plays by sixty playwrights in LA; at least half of those plays were by Latino playwrights; a good quarter of those plays were in Spanish; and we had 65 actors; more than half of them were over the age of forty; more than half of them weren’t white, and it was a completely different experience than what we did in New York. It had a local identity and it sold out.

It was exactly like what happened in the first year of the festival. It was kinda sloppy, like the first year in New York, but you have to remember that these theaters haven’t done it before, so every time you ask someone to make a one-minute play for the first time, or write it for the first time, it’s like starting from square one back in 2007, but that’s ok because you have to let every theater that wants to invest in this project sort of discover what it is, and give them a chance to grow it in their way, so it’s a lot of patience in that regard.

Immediately the next weekend, we went to San Francisco and partnered with the Playwrights Foundation which is a really similar organization to the Lark. It’s a playwrights’ service organization, and we did the festival to benefit their member programming so it supported their core playwrights and their community playwrights that are a part of their theater initiative, and that was about forty playwrights, and that festival was really, really unique. They’ve already committed to having the festival back for years to come, as is L.A., so those festivals are going to be continuing.

The third festival, I did was in New Jersey with the New Brunswick Theater Festival, which is a small organization that works with youth communities and prison communities and does Shakespeare and educational programming with populations of people that may not have access to that kind of education or opportunity in that region of New Jersey.

The festival was also very different than the one in New York. I was concerned that it would be too similar to New York because its close proximity, but New Jersey has its own culture, and a lot of this work is about discovering the culture of what every city is.

After that, we did Victory Gardens in Chicago which was our biggest festival. We did a hundred and one plays by close to seventy playwrights on the main stage of the Biograph and to me, Chicago, as a jaded New Yorker, is the best theater city in the United States. They were so enthusiastic. The festival was awesome. They just got it. And this year we’re going back to all of those places and a bunch of new places too. So the festival has almost doubled in size a year – including this year which is benefiting the Einhorn School of Performing Arts.

How did the collaboration between Espa/Primary Stages and the One-Minute Play Festival come about?

Tessa and I just talked. I know the staff pretty well and she wanted to do it. I think ESPA is the most unique theater school in New York. Tessa LaNeve has taken a bunch of random classes and turned it into an institution within an institution, and I get the sense that people that are buying in there really feel like they have a home, and they serve their community in the way that other organizations I’ve partnered with have, and they’re growing, and they have really clear goals, and it just seemed like the natural place to partner.

The culture of that theater is very friendly, and I will say that top to bottom, including their artistic director Andrew Leynse, who is directing for it, and Elliot Fox, who is really exciting about it, and the whole staff, has really taken ownership of the project as much as I have. They’ve supported this project as part of their programming and it’s exactly what I had hoped to do with the festival, which is not to impose but to absorb.

Meaning?

I want to absorb the culture of the institution and the community that I’m working in. So just being careful in the way you program, and the way you word things, and who you think about including and why you’re including people. And to listen, a lot of listening to their concerns about what the institution and the artists want to say about the festival.

It’s also important to know that I don’t give the writers any thematic guidelines whatsoever. I think about the festival as kind of like an artistic core sample, like I ask everyone to write from this place of structure so the idea is that the plays will allow themselves to build, so the esthetic of the evening is ninety - or however many plays there are - little pulses of story-telling, but the collective voice is the thing we’re really trying to get to the core of, and every single time, many, many themes emerge.

So what I try to do is look at the landscape of the plays and group them, or clump them based on what’s being said or not. I’m trying to honor or respect what the collective voice is, if at all - and sometimes it’s very hard - and sometimes it’s very apparent, but what I’ve noticed is that the themes that have emerged in every city and in every theater culture around the country have never repeated themselves, so every incarnation of the festival is about something else, and that to me says a lot about the nature of local theater making and what is happening city to city.

My theory is that instead of theater sort of thinking about reaching far, I think theater needs to act and think locally. Someone said to me the other day, ‘you’re kind of like a theatrical localvore’ and I do think that theater has to serve your immediate community. I think if you want to be very broad, you should go to film and television. I think that people are starting to get it, that theater is about what is happening in that place and in that moment and the festival is certainly a snapshot of ideas that are about that place and that moment and that’s just what it is.

The One-Minute Play Festival is Sunday October 16th at 2 and 7pm at 59E59. For information and tickets, come hither. In honor of the 5th Annual New York One-Minute Play Festival, the OMPF asked some of its favorite alumni playwrights to "live-write" several short plays over the course of the evening, which will be performed by actors in real time at the Brick, Friday Oct 14th.

Dominic D'Andrea: the Fatherdude of the One-Minute Play Festival

2011-10-03T20:27:00.013-04:00

"There’s a whole culture of our generation that’s doing work from the heart, and a place of impulse, and from the gut..."

Since you ask playwrights to write one minute plays, I thought I’d ask you to describe yourself in one word. Just off the cuff…

There.

There? There not here?

(laughing) There and here! Wherever. Call me and I’m there.

How did you come to directing?

I came to directing in an interesting way. In college, I was part of this thing called the American College Theatre Festival and I was really trying to get this acting nomination to be part of the Irene Ryan Acting Scholarship and I worked really, really hard on casting this production and when push came to shove, I didn’t get the nomination. Around that same time, the student association at our college was putting on a production of the Rocky Horror Musical and they needed a director, so I was like, what the hell, I’ll do this, and they contacted me and I did and it was awesome.

We caused a lot of trouble - we got into trouble with security on campus, something crazy like 2000 people showed up to see it one night, and because of that, I ended up being eligible for this thing KCATF was launching that year for student directors, and since I technically had done one college production, I submitted myself.

I was a sophomore in college, and never directed anything in my life, and somehow I got picked to be part of this directing thing. They sent me to a regional competition at Carnegie Mellon, and I walked into the room, and here I was nineteen years old, and everybody in the room was like thirty years old, MFA students from top schools, and I was so intimidated.

They gave us all the same play to direct and somehow I won, quote unquote, and they gave me this opportunity to go to the Kennedy Center and be there as a director. This was in 1999, and I was like, ‘wow!’ I went down there, and met all these amazing people.

That’s where I met Marion McClinton. He was doing Hedly at the time, and I met Mead Hunter and Megan Monaghan, and ended up working here for a bit (the Lark Play Development Center) and I met a man named Eric Schaeffer - who just directed Follies that opened on Broadway a few days ago, and also runs the Signature Theatre in DC. We were talking and turns out we come from similar backgrounds, so from that point, I started working in DC Theater which was cool since it was my hometown.

So I started working for Eric Schaeffer and quickly started working for other theater companies in town and whatever that opportunity was from KCATF just segued into sort of a career for me in theater at a very young age.

So, when you were directing that first production as an undergrad, you weren’t thinking, ‘oh, I haven’t taking that directing 101 class…”

(Laughing) I did all that stuff later.

So what was your approach?

Common sense, which is sort of the way I direct now, which is something Marion and I were just talking about upstairs. He was just saying to me that what he’s really impressed with, in this generation of artists coming up, is that though most of us have some sort of training, or a lot of training, there’s a whole culture of our generation that’s doing work from the heart, and a place of impulse, and from the gut, and I thought, ‘yeah, I agree with that’. I think that’s very much true with me and every decision I’ve made. It’s been from the gut.

Of course, I did all my training and stuff, but it’s also been very impulsive - whatever I felt like I needed to work on, or felt like I needed to say. And most of that has been in conjunction with working with playwrights and ACTF in 1999, so those kinds of collaborations - which are difficult for some people - are very natural to me, and it’s almost weird when I don’t have a playwright in a process.

How do you work with your playwrights? Or is it unique to every situation?

Yeah, I think so. It’s mostly about starting from a place of goals. I think one of the reasons I’ve spent so much time here at the Lark is that there are so many way to learn about how to begin working with a playwright and, for me, my big education working in the theater has been with this company and with these people so I’ve been very fortunate to have that opportunity.

But yeah, it’s unique to every situation but it’s starting from this place of what do you want to know? What are your goals? If the playwright is able to articulate a set of things they want to work on, able to articulate why they wrote this work, what they’re saying and what they want to do with it, I kind of look at that, and figure if I can help, or be a part of that, or push it, or bring it to a reality in some way, or if it seems like a project that would fit for me.

Do you find that most playwrights are able to articulate those things?

Yeah, I find that it’s different for a lot of people. I think the playwrights that I tend to work with are playwrights that are able to articulate those types of things, sure. But I can certainly think of many playwrights who I respect who can’t articulate their work so well - maybe they’re types of playwrights who are writing from a different place, or have a different style, or have a different thing to say, and their work is awesome, too. There’s a whole laundry list of people that I’d love to work with, and it’s because I have no idea how they work, and I respect it, and love it, but it’s so opposite from where I am.

For example?

Sibyl Kempson. I’ve worked with her before but not in a deep way. There’s nothing recognizable about her process or the work that she does. It’s bizarre, and it’s wonderful, and it’s really, really challenging dramaturgically and idealistically.

She’ll make a play where her and her friend do a hundred roles - two people, and they’ll either be in a scene by themselves or another person, it doesn’t matter, and it’ll just sort of sprawl. Or she’ll write a play about these people who are aging, and act one will be about them coming to terms with where they were in their life, and act two, these alien potatoes descend upon the world, and capture them, and take them underground, tie them up, and have a debate about the meaning of life.

So, it’s like I have no idea what the impulse was for that, but it’s amazing, and something that I just can’t pinpoint the genesis of, but definitely when experiencing it, understand what it means viscerally, and I really value those experiences that challenge what I know and think.

What you were saying about this generation of artists coming up being more instinctually inclined in their approach… do you have any ideas on why that may be?

I think it has to do with the fact that this generation has been subjected to so much institutional programming and so much institutional thinking. I think if you look at the generations before us, not everybody has had an MFA or undergraduate program, not every theater had a structure that allows or accommodates emerging artists for better or for worse in a very specific way, not every theater had a playwriting program, or a blind-submission process, or a reading series, or some kind of school or class opportunity.

I mean, back in the day, I think people who wanted to work in theaters did the assistant thing and then sort of came up through the ranks, and I think now, our generation is so subjected to, ‘Oh if you want to work for that theater, you have to apply to the thing.’ We’re always applying to things, so in response to that, people are getting away from that system and going back to the theater that people want to make, perhaps. I’m assuming.

I mean, I notice that it’s true for me and some of the people that I work with. And there’s always a balance between your institutional involvement and the stuff you want to do outside of that realm. And it’s a healthy balance. I think it’s good to be part of institutions, and it’s also good to have opportunities to explore your own voice on your terms. But I think the impulse being what it is, is to work on your own terms perhaps.

I know that you can’t name everyone, but just off the top of your head, what are some of the artists and theater companies that are doing that right now?

Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, the work that the Amoralists are doing; I think they’re really smart. They’re sort of becoming their own institution by doing things on their own terms. Rude Mechanicals, certainly – they’re kind of an institution but they’re doing it on their own terms and toured their own work. And any number of international companies that come through.

Part Two will continue with the genesis and inspiration behind the One-Minute Play Festival which is being co-produced by Primary Stages at 59E59 on October 16. For more information, take a minute right here.

Dominic D'Andrea and the One-Minute Play Festival...

2011-09-27T00:22:00.005-04:00

Writer/Performer Cyndi Freeman Captures Wonder Woman in Her Lasso of Truth

2011-09-25T19:33:00.014-04:00

"I did some soul searching and discovered it was both the anti-Nazi sentiment and the sexiness that really seemed to get to my core."

Two-time, FringeNYC award-winning writer/performer Cyndi Freeman's latest solo show traces her journey from a little suburban Jewish girl obsessed with Wonder Woman to a fabulous burlesque Queen in NYC.

How did you get into performing?

As a kid I was just always reenacting TV shows with my friends and staging little plays for my poor parents. When asked at age 5 what I wanted to be when I grew up I said, "a movie star". As I got older, I realized "Movie Star" is not what it's cracked up to be - that the bug I always had was in creating my own shows. So I am still doing what I was doing when I was 5 - just for a larger audience.

What is your show about?

I became obsessed with Wonder Woman when I was 12. Although I have "grown up", I am still influenced by the icon. So many of my choices are connected to my love of Wonder Woman and what she symbolizes. The show weaves personal stories of discovery and empowerment with trivia about America's favorite female superhero.

What was the inspiration for it?

For my 40th Birthday, I bought myself the DVD of Wonder Woman, Season 1, just for fun. I started the pilot on my computer, expecting to find it too childish for my adult sensibility, but as I watched it, I found that chills went up my spine. It was the same feeling I had when I was 12 watching the show -like a giant hug.

I did some soul searching and discovered it was both the anti-Nazi sentiment and the sexiness that really seemed to get to my core. I decided there would be a great show in this when I started looking into who created her, William Marston. From there I became even more inspired to move forward with it. Wonder Woman has an amazing history. The show has been slowly coming together for 7 years.

What was the development process of the material from inspiration to stage to this stage?

I am a storyteller in NYC and have a show of my own that I co-produce with my husband, Brad Lawrence. It is the perfect place to try out new ideas. All my stories were worked out before an audience. Meanwhile, I worked with my director, David Drake, on shaping and structuring the show, choosing which stories were best for the show and coming up with the perfect words. He is a very, very funny man and many of my best one-liners came from him.

How did you find your director?

Through a mutual friend, theater producer Paul Lucas, who was a doll and helped me find not just a director but a photographer who came to a rough draft staging and gave notes. As for David Drake, I am so lucky to have worked with him.

This is a one-woman show but not a one-woman effort by any means. David really helped me find the core themes that I was working with. The stuff hidden in my subconscious that I would not have been aware of without his keen eye. He is also just a lovely guy and a lot of fun. Alas, he is out of town at the moment. In the meantime, I am receiving additional coaching on the show from Peter Aguero, who is one of the best storytellers in NY.

Who or what inspires you?

Stories from the heart. I love "This American Life", "The Moth", and I read memoirs. I also have a love of camp and over the top bad books and movies, so I have a huge collection of pulp fiction with crazy covers that I read for kicks. I am also fascinated with cryptozoology. My current read is a book entitled "The Great Sea Serpent of New England." And I also love burlesque performers- the scene in NY is so creative and fun. My favorite TV show is Dr Who.

What's your writing schedule like?

I go through phases where I am prolific and then I am dry. I had a teacher once tell me that part of the creative process is "listening" so I guess I have my "listening phase" and then my "saying something phase."

What do you do when you get a block?

I make myself go into listening mode. I cruise the Internet for what ever might interest me. For example, I knew very little about Napoleon. So one day I started at Wikipedia, went next to a documentary from PBS and discovered that, during his final exile on the island of St. Helena, he met a 13 year old girl, Besty Balcombe, who became a very special friend.

She wrote a memoir about her time as his pal with the long title Recollections of Napoleon During His First Three Years of His Captivity on the Island of St. Helena. Published in 1844, the book has a similar style to Little House on the Prairie but it stars Napoleon. Boy, did this get my mind moving in new directions! It is available for free at Archive.org.

What shows/performers are you excited about right now?

Sept 27 (Tue) My storytelling show, The Standard Issues, is at Pacific Standard Bar in Park Slope Brooklyn next week. It is always a great line up and a great clubhouse feel. The show is every 4th Tuesday of the month @ 8pm

Oct 5 (Wed) And I Am Not Lying - This is a great line up of talent! Story Telling Burlesque and Side Show - at Union Hall in Brooklyn 8pm

Oct 14 (Fri) & Oct 15 (Sat) Epic Win Burlesque (Nerd Burlesque at its finest) Presents DC vs MARVEL - I am going to do a burlesque act as Wonder Woman - it’s at TADA! Youth Theater - 9:30

What's next?

See the above shows and take Wonder Woman on the road to festivals in the US and Canada.

Wonder Woman: A How to Guide for Little Jewish Girls is playing 2 shows Oct 4 & 6 at Stage Left Studios in NYC, part of their Women At Work Festival. You can lasso some tix here.

The Pillar(s) of Our Community : The 2011 NY Innovative Theater Awards Celebrates the Tenacity and Audacity of Off-Off Broadway

2011-09-20T22:11:00.015-04:00

"That's right. HIV jokes on the same stage Lincoln used to orate."

And thus began the 2011 NY Innovative Theater Awards, hosted by the hilarious and adorable comedian, Harrison Greenbaum at the Cooper Union.

(Cheerleaders courtesy of The Passion Crest Violators Fictional Cheerleading Squad.)

We are so glad you left Harvard to pursue not law or business-shmizness, but the far-loftier goal of bringing laughter into the hearts of the world, especially the off-off Broadway theater scene which celebrated it's own Monday night, wearing its heart on its sleeve, its tongue in its cheek and, in true off-off Broadway form, a pillar right in front of the podium. PILLAR SHMILLAR!

"It's going to be a night of 'Hey! That's the guy from that thing... No, not that thing, the other thing. Yeah!" joked Greenbaum. And NYIT celebrated so many awesome things done by awesome guys and gals creating awesome inventive, DIY theater magic. (But hey, we need more gals!)

Fun Fact That Will Floor You
Out of 13 awards given to individuals, 9 went to the mens and 4 to the womens. Out of 10 playwrights nominated, 2 were women. So really, women, you better start learning yourselves how to write more better.

Another (more cheerful) fun fact: This year's awards had the most individual nominees than in any previous season, with over 169 theater artists and 80 members of ensembles acknowledged by NYIT, "the only organization that gives awards to stage managers." (Congratulations chick-a-licious stage manager, Laura Schlachtmeyer!)

Flux Theatre Ensemble received the Caffe Cino Fellowship award and summoned the Goddess of Indie Theater to answer the nascent cries for creative control and DO IT YOURSELFism...

while also giving a nod to all that that entails: the temp jobs, the exhaustion, the money (or lack thereof) for lumber (Flux: "Why does it cost so much? It's just wood!")

BUT IT'S STILL WORTH IT!

Go Flux!

Horse Trade Theater Group won the Ellen Stewart Award for supporting and creating a vital community and home for independent theater artists. In accepting the award, Horse Trade announced they had just negotiated and signed a new lease for Under St. Marks Theatre and are moving towards its purchase.

Playwright Robert Patrick (whose first play The Haunted Host was produced in 1964 and premiered at the Caffe Cino) won the Artistic Achievement Award presented by actress and luminary Shirley Knight, commenting that Parker "gave us that magical thing of floor" and added, "it's so nice to be at an awards show where the awards are given for the quality of the work..."

Of the twenty awards, The Drowsy Chaperone by the Gallery Players cleaned up with four including Outstanding Ensemble, Outstanding Choreography / Movement (Christine O'Grady), Outstanding Costume Design (Ryan J. Moller) and Outstanding Production of a Musical.

To present the Outstanding Production of a Play (Balm in Gilead/T. Schreiber Studio) was the beloved, born-in-the-Bronx bad-ass, John Patrick Shanley who sauntered out asking, "Do you still want to continue the struggle? Are you still willing to ruin your lives and the lives of others to follow your dream?" The answer wasn't so much applause (which there was) but laughter because any other option is, well, laughable.

For a complete list of winners and nominees, click it like you mean it here.

For additional inspiration and excitement, you're just going to have to get your cute little bootie to the 2012 NYIT. Seriously, it's worth way more than the ticket price. Bring friends, wear a boa or bondage or nothing it all, but go. (It's rumored that the All-Mighty Pillar brings good luck to all who attend because, frankly, without obstacles and the insane urge to overcome them, where would off-off Broadway or any dramatist, actor, artist worth their salt be?)

Theaterspeak congratulates and thanks ALL of the off-off Broadway nominees, winners and otherwise for a spectacular season. We look forward to more.

The New York Innovative Theatre Foundation is a not-for-profit organization recognizing the great work of New York City's Off-Off-Broadway, honoring its artistic heritage, and providing a meeting ground for this extensive and richly varied community. The organization advocates for Off-Off-Broadway and recognizes the unique and essential role it plays in contributing to American and global culture. They believe that publicly recognizing excellence in Off-Off-Broadway will expand audience awareness and foster greater appreciation of the New York theatre experience. BOOYA!

NYIT Photos: David Fletcher
Robert Patrick Photo courtesy of the Interweb God
All Other Photos courtesy of My Crappy Little Camera.

A Sneak Peak at J. Stephen Brantley's Eighty three Down

2011-09-11T20:00:00.016-04:00

Playwright J. Stephen Brantley's gave Theaterspeak the first look at some new pics of his sizzling new play Eightythree Down (directed by Daniel Talbott) now playing at Under St. Marks.

It’s New Year’s Eve 1983 and Martin’s plan for a quiet night in his parents’ basement is thrown into chaos when his old friend Dina and her hooligan roommates arrive with a gun, a bag of stolen books, and a dangerous idea.

STUART

You can see we need you. I need you. It’s nearly midnight and I’ve no one to kiss. Be a shame to waste the moment, a couple of blokes like us.

MARTIN

What are you doing?

STUART

I’m not doing anything, am I.

TONY

You don’t work, fuckers like you. The whole world works around you. Building your tennis courts. Cleaning your toilets. Repairing your stereos and installing your cable and stuffing your Care Bears and you don’t even notice. You contribute nothing. You have no craft. I hate people who have no craft.
___________________________________________________________

DINA

We’re all insane, really. It’s just a matter of perspective. If you were to suggest I spend the rest of my life in somebody’s basement reading books about birds, I’d say that’s totally raving crazy. Most people would.

MARTIN

I’m not spending the rest of my life-

DINA

How do you know?
MARTIN
What?

DINA

Well, how do you know you won’t be dead tomorrow, scooby-doo? What if tonight is the rest of your life?

Eightythree Down runs until September 17th and stars Melody Bates, Ian Holcomb, Bryan Kaplan, and Brian Miskell. Under St. Marks is located at 94 St. Marks Place between Avenue A and 1st. Tickets can be purchased through Smart Tix. Photographs by Hunter Canning.

J. Stephen Brantley's New Play Eightythree Down is Sex, Drugs and New Wave Music. Need I Say More?

2011-08-20T00:25:00.012-04:00

"The good news is that whenever things fall apart, New York makes great art."

You've been involved in theater for a bit now, in various capacities...

Aside from my seven-year narcotic sabbatical, I’ve been doing theater non-stop since I was a teenager.

I’ve considered pursuing other vocations – porn, the priesthood – but I keep coming back to making plays. It’s so hard. I ask myself why I keep at it and all I can come up with is ‘I love rehearsal.’ A lot.

Why did you decide to start Hard Sparks?

I turned forty and I was sick of waiting around. I’d said for years that I had no desire to start a company but it simply came time to do things for myself, to take a leap into less comfortable territory and make something happen.

I’d also been feeling like a lot of companies out there, even those with the best intentions, were not treating artists as well as they could. I’m tired of actors and playwrights being made to feel like producers do them a favor by allowing them to work for free in their productions. Don’t get me wrong – a community of people coming together to develop new work simply for the love of it is great. Rising Phoenix Rep’s ‘Cino Nights’ series is the best of that. But they’re not charging admission, are they?

So I wanted to create a way that I could take really good care of actors. What I discovered was that I can’t do nearly enough. I found myself working with professionals who are actually quite used to being treated fairly, but are more than willing to work on my play for little more than the love of doing so. I’m still giving them everything I possibly can, but it’s not enough. Better than Showcase Code is still less than minimum wage. It’s tragic. Someone asked me if starting a production company was as empowering as I’d imagined it would be. Actually, it is the most humbling thing I’ve ever done. Sober, anyway.

What is Hard Sparks mission?

While our mission continues to evolve, there are three guiding principles for Hard Sparks: We commit to full productions of edgy new work. Not readings, not revivals of classics, but cool contemporary stuff. Second, we do it without sacrificing the dignity of the artists involved. That means everyone gets paid. And, maybe most importantly, we partner in creative ways with community-based organizations working to improve people’s lives.

This one is really important to me, but it’s also, in some ways, the most challenging. I want to produce plays that bring light to social issues, and I want to do it in a way that not only creates awareness of said issues, but also somehow benefits organizations working on them. We’re still working out the right way to go about it, but I’m determined that Hard Sparks somehow makes a positive impact in the wider world.

What is Eightythree Down about?

Eightythree Down takes place in Great Neck, New York during the final hour of 1983. It’s a sort of home invasion, really, of the basement bedroom of a closeted bird-watcher called Martin. Martin’s very fabulous old friend Dina turns up on New Year’s Eve with her ‘roommates’ in tow. They’ve fallen in with a seriously dangerous element and are running for their lives. When they descend on Martin it completely rearranges his reality. Things get quite violent and extremely sexy and the whole thing happens in about an hour. On one hand it’s about the consequences of indulgence and the futility of isolation. But then, it’s also sex, drugs, and new wave music. Loads of fun.

Who's involved in the production?

I’m really fortunate to have Daniel Talbott directing this play. He’s a freaking dynamo, I don’t know how he does so much. He’s brought along an amazing design team – Janie Bullard, Eugenia Furneax-Arends, Brad Peterson, and Tristan Raines. And our cast is just astonishing. I’m a little in love with, and very much in awe of, each one of them. Melody Bates, Ian Holcomb, Bryan Kaplan, and Brian Miskell. They are scary good and incredibly hot.

Did you hire a publicist?

Horse Trade has a publicist for everything it produces or co-produces, which is awesome. Of course, this doesn't mean I'm not also working the hell out of Facebook.

I’m always looking for ways to co-promote with other shows and events. It’s harder than I thought. Once Hard Sparks is a bit more established, other producers may be more amenable to postcard swaps and event tie-ins. For now I’m working the blog circuit and directing people to our IndieGoGo page. Which is http://www.indiegogo.com/Hard-Sparks

What was the inspiration for this seriously awesome play?

You’re going to laugh but I was on a Pinter binge. And then he died. So I watched the BBC version of The Room with Linda Hunt and Annie Lennox and started out with a play that was actually very quiet. But then it morphed into something else entirely and I’m very glad it did.

I’d also been thinking a lot about communications technologies – the internet mainly – how we use them, how we got here, where it all started. I keep trying to write about this schism between what should have been (greater connection) versus what I think is (further fragmentation) and that took me back to the early Eighties.

I feel like there was a cultural shift of some kind in 1983, some major change we may not have noticed at the time. We’ve all been very nostalgic for the Eighties lately, but there was a lot more going on than day-glo fishnets and the release of ‘Thriller.’ It was a grimy time. Economically? Politically? AIDS? So much fear. Of course it’s not unlike our current era in that. The good news is that whenever things fall apart, New York makes great art. Then and, hopefully, now.

What was your process in writing/developing it?

An early draft got me into a workshop with Craig Lucas at the 2009 Southampton Writers Conference. Craig’s work had always inspired me, and his Prelude To A Kiss was the first Broadway play I saw, so this was seriously cool. He helped to shape the play’s four characters by encouraging me to get more specific with them.

And then, once in rehearsal for this production, Daniel pushed me to up the stakes and push the action. Of course, you change one thing – like making the bad guy really really bad – and the whole thing falls apart. You have to reconstruct the story according to a new logic. So I threw out half the play and sat there staring at my computer at 3am cursing Daniel Talbott and having this imaginary debate with him about whether The Glass Menagerie would still be the same play if aliens landed on the Wingfield’s fire escape…And then I got over myself now it’s a much better play. Actually I love revisions. And I love Daniel Talbott.

How did you get involved with Horse Trade Theater Co?

Originally, as an actor. Well, originally as a squatter, but that’s another story. I was in Heidi Grumelot’s adaptation of Love’s Labours Lost called Punk Rock Love Song. I had a blue mohawk and played the recorder. I started sending her scripts, talking about doing this play, which takes place in a basement, at Horse Trade’s subterranean space on St. Mark’s…eventually I wore her down.

Are you noticing any trends in theater lately?

New York has lost fifty-seven performance spaces in three years. I’ve noticed that. I’ve noticed an increased economic disparity between commercial and indie theatre. I mean, there’s always been, but now there’s really no middle ground. And I’ve noticed that only a few artists are really looking for ways to make and present work in this new reality. It’s not going to be the unions or the arts councils or commercial producers taking care of us anymore. Artists are going to have to make things happen for themselves.

On the other hand, you walk down East 4^th Street and things don’t seem so bleak. How many theaters are on that block now? And not one of them dark, ever, except maybe for renovations.

What's coming up next?

Hard Sparks is producing Nicole Pandolfo’s Love In The Time Of Chlamydia for festivals and touring. I’m really interested in seeing how her piece will work in pubs and other non-theater spaces. I may produce another of my own little monsters. And I am looking at work by a few other playwrights. Hard Sparks produces ‘daring performances of dangerous plays.’ There’s a lot of really good work out there, but not much that really fits such a mission. I’m also seriously thinking about cleaning out my refrigerator and maybe spending some time with my boyfriend. And oh yeah, I’m going to write a new play. I swear.

Eightythree Down begins September 1st and runs through Sunday the 18th at Under St. Marks. To purchase tickets, just light a clove cigarette, put black eyeliner ALL AROUND YOUR EYES and click your jaded little cursor here.

Photographs by Daniel Talbott.

The Dish that Inspired the Music that Inspired the Art that Inspired the Plays

2011-07-21T00:13:00.030-04:00

"It kind of just says 'go there, jump into the water and stop thinking about it." -playwright Daniel Talbott

You sit in a circle and someone whispers a sentence in your ear. You pass it on "as best you can" to the kid sitting next to you.

By the time it reaches the last kid in the circle, the sentence has changed in unimaginable ways that usually leads to giggles and delight for one and all. Overturn Ensemble takes this familiar children's game and gets crazy on its Pampers - and this week - you get to play, too.

MAKING THE CALL

"After reading about (LES bar/gallery) Culturefix in the NYTimes, I reached out to Lia Woertendyke (the gallery director) about a possible collaboration back in January,” said Overturn Ensemble’s Artistic Director Kristy Dodson. “Lia and I shot off a number of ideas and I think they eventually just all came together in a crazy hodge-podge of the arts. There are so many up and coming playwrights, not to mention those that proceed us, who were inspired by visual art (Brooke Berman, Crystal Skillman, Christopher Oscar Pena, etc.) and I thought, why doesn't someone do that? …So while it started with visual to kinetic, it eventually had to cover our senses as a whole.”

WHEN THE PHONE RINGS, PICK IT UP (It might be something yummy.)

"It all began with (Culturefix co-owner and chef) Ari Stern's dish which he named Chinese Whispers, which is the Australian name for the American Version of the game Telephone. That kind of creativity from the get-go inspired everyone else to think outside the box,” says Dodson.

From a bite of the above-mentioned inspiration, composer Michael Vincent Waller wrote a piece of music which was performed for sixteen artists who, in turn, created pieces of art which then served as the inspiration for sixteen playwrights from the Overturn Theater Ensemble who had only one week to write plays that were then brought to life by professional actors and directors.

So basically, alls YOU gotta do is go to Culturefix any night of this week at 6:00 (show starts at 6:30), order a drink from their “carefully curated selection of wine and American and European beers”, scoot your derrier to the back and place those ears of yours in the headphones hanging from the wall on your right and listen.

Listen while focusing your pretty peepers on the art hanging all around you. Imagine what the Chinese Whispers tasted like. Masticate the magnificent of inspiration between your pearly whites. Marinate your mind in the juices of brilliance.

EASY, RIGHT?

“It was tougher than I thought. Initially, I wasn't flooded with any ideas that I wanted to write about,” said playwright Mando Alvarado. “I wanted to challenge myself. And it was hard to get any real detail off the picture I was sent. So I thought about the theme and I slept on it. Woke up wanting to put a twist on it, and that's what I did."

Alvarado’s play, Mambo Love Bomb was inspired by One Minute to Foreverever by Nico Traut (pictured above). “It's about a Marine who is about to be sent to Vietnam and he decides to visit his ex-lover. Unfortunately, his lover is still pissed off about how things ended and decides to take revenge, in a cinematic way.”

“I loved not having a lot of time to think about it, or to over-think it,” said fellow playwright Daniel Talbott. “I really appreciated that someone just sent me a surprise and said run. It was great and felt really freeing and fun. I often think time constraints can be insanely helpful because you have no choice but to dive in - it kind of just says 'go there, jump into the water and stop thinking about it - let something outside inspire it, give over and just see where it takes you'."

Talbott's play, based on the painting by artist Anthony Iacono, called "Second Helping #15"(pictured right) is called Break My Face with Your Hand. "It's about this omni-sexual kid called Bear and this other high school student, Trev, who are forced to spend an hour a day for a week after school together in Bear's grandma's kitchen because of Trev's treatment of Bear at School.”

“I'm not quite sure why that's what I ran with from Anthony's painting but I started with that and also a song that my friend Aria sent me around the same time that I got the painting, and it sort of just happened from there.”

Talbott's play is going up Friday, July 22nd with Cecilia Copeland's play, Velvet Eggs, inspired by Christine Rucker’s painting, Venn Diagram: Pt IV.

"Velvet Eggs is about a woman appreciating the male body, exploring heterosexuality in a world where being straight can translate to conservative, and finding a way for both a man and woman to connect in a way that is as much about emotional nudity and love as it is about physical attraction.

The most jarring thing about the process,” continues Copeland (pictured), “was that my painting was worked on past the deadline. So when I saw it in person, it was different than the JPEG. I felt somehow hurt by the artists, tricked…but then I thought, well, I guess that's part of the "telephone" aspect of it."

Jeffrey James Keyes adds, "I feel that when you give artists from different disciplines the opportunity to be in dialogue or in the room with each other, the creativity becomes charged, electric." His play, Electra on the Strip was based on Cara Shih's piece, “The House, It Sings” and is a retelling of Euripides' version of Electra in which Orestes returns home and kills his mother.

“I was on a work trip to Las Vegas when I received the image and couldn't resist setting the play in a casino on the Strip. That night I went to see an amazing drag show (Frank Marino's Divas Las Vegas) at the Imperial where Frank Marino, dressed as Joan Rivers, presented an incredible line-up of drag queens.

It came to me, Clytemnestra is the hostess of a burlesque/drag show and Electra and Orestes would be the performers. In a weird way, the spirit and buzz of the glamorous life of Wynn's Encore Tower Suites, where I was staying, completely inspired the piece. I raced to write the play late in the evenings in the Encore Tower, as I looked down at an incredible view of the glam and grit on the Vegas strip.”

"For me, it was a return to my writing roots." says Carmen Palaez, (pictured below) whose play, Wrapped in a Bow, debuted Monday. "I learned how to write by going to museums and actually spend much more time in museums than theaters."

Her inspiration was Dan Giordano's painting, Four Fold Knot. "The painting is a collage of five cut-outs of women from the waist down in pornographic positions,” describes Palaez. “It’s on a gold background with a snakeskin cut-out and a man's traditional shirt-cuffed hand pointing an arrow to one of the vagina's that has a vibrator inserted into it.”

“Its graphic nature wasn't shocking or provoking just boring…” continues Palaez. “I didn't connect with this particular painting at all. There was nothing about it that spoke anything that I like to write about. And this isn't a knock on Dan-he's gifted. It's just this particular piece wasn't something that I wanted to live with in my head and it inspired only banality - which was fine because I thought of the person with most banal perspective I have ever known and wrote about him.”

SO, YOU GO SEE THE PLAYS… NOW WHAT?

“Get to know us! We are always so excited to meet artists (of all genres) that are interested in creating something life changing for the theatre that will move it into the 21st century,” says Dodson. “Come to our shows and tell us what you are up to and what your big dream is... we love to talk about big and crazy dreams.”

Telephone is at Culturefix, 9 Clinton Street, NYC until July 24^th. Play readings begin every night at 6:30 in the gallery. Tickets are $10 available on Brown Paper Tickets.

Free (or Almost Free) Things That New York Theater Artists Should Know About - Part One

2011-06-01T18:04:00.019-04:00

"Honestly, any good thing that has happened to me in terms of my writing career, I can trace back to someone who I met through ESPA."

-Playwright Erika Sheffer

1. Classes at Einhorn School of Performing Arts

Ok, so not exactly free but this is the low down (and it is virtually free – I’ll tell you how later), but to begin with: take a five or ten week class in writing, directing or acting at ESPA with their faculty of award-winning, working theater artists and deepen your craft exponentially.

You’ll meet cool people to play with and put your career squarely on the road to success. How? Let me tell you, or actually, I’ll let playwright Erika Sheffer tell you, who’s kick-ass new play, Russian Transport, is currently being developed by The New Group.

“I began taking playwriting classes at ESPA four years ago. My background was in acting and over the past few years, through continuous study, I have learned how I write plays.

1. keeps lots of snacks on hand.
2. do a lot of yoga.
3. keep going even when what you're writing sucks- (That one's probably the most important).”

She continues.

“I've learned what my process is starting from the first draft on through to the rewrite stage, right up to development. But in addition to the nuts and bolts stuff, ESPA has provided me with a community of writers and friends from which I can draw support.
Honestly, any good thing that has happened to me, in terms of my writing career, I can trace back to someone who I met through ESPA, whether it was a teacher or fellow student. I'm talking about getting an agent, getting my play into a certain person's hands, or getting a fantastic recommendation.

For much of the time, writing is a solitary act, but you NEED to get your work out there. You need to meet people, and share your voice and get people excited about your stuff. Equally important is to find other writers inspire you. I love, love, love sitting in class and seeing one of my fellow classmates kick ass. It inspires me for that next time I'm struggling to conquer some angry plot-monkey staring at me from my laptop.”

And no one likes an angry plot monkey.

COMMUNITY GIVES YOU IMMUNITY

Community is a common theme when theater artists talk about ESPA. Rob Rosiello (pictured), who also has an acting background adds,

“The on-going and intimate engagement with other writers keeps me focused on my writing and also offers me an invaluable resource for answers to questions about the business of theater, as well as the artistic questions that can sometimes arise from one's own writing and creative process- it's just nice to know I'm not alone out there!"

His play, Hay Days, about labor advocate and gay activist Harry Hays is going up at Celebration Theater in Los Angeles this month following a reading of another play developed at ESPA called Cold Stun.

This is not a “take a class and wait for someone to call you” type of environment. Most students are doing a variety of projects and doing them well. Take for instance actor/playwright/femme fatale Yolanda Kay who is part of the always exciting Neo-Futurists. While a student at ESPA, she met fellow awesome theater babe and the other half of Theaterspeak's 2011 Sexiest Theater Couple Alive, Mariah MacCarthy, (Purple Rep Theater which was co-founded by her other sexy-half, Larry Kunofsky. They met at ESPA, btw.)

Ms. Kay (pictured) was cast in MacCarthy’s All American Genderf*ck Cabaret which had a successful run last spring at The Pleasure Factory downtown. But since doing two things at once is not enough, Ms. Kay continues to develop her plays, one of which, Inheritence had a recent reading by Red Harlem Readers (and I’ll probably hear from her in a day or two telling me I left out a thing or three).

NEW WORK IS THE NEW BLACK

So yes, you get to benefit from the experience of professional theater artists; you get to join in a rockin' community; but that’s not all! You also get to participate in writing and creating new work. As writer/actress Kathleen Turco-Lyons says,

“ESPA has been a place that I can go weekly to ‘try on’ the new ideas I’ve pondered and written out in the days before class. I am so grateful for their attention to supporting new works for the stage.”

You won’t find Ms. Turco-Lyons lollygagging on the beach this summer, instead you’ll find her playing the role of Queen Elizabeth I in Timothy Findley’s drama, Elizabeth Rex at Stonington Opera House in Stonington Maine. Her recent play Beneath Between (developed at ESPA and Naked Angels' Tuesdays at 9) is being produced by the 15th Floor this fall at the Primary Stages Studios.

SUPPORT IS SEXY

ESPA also provides support to its students in a uniquely comprehensive way.

Free programs such as the ever-popular Detention (which Theaterspeak covered in more detail last month and is pictured to the right), as well as the Honor Society and the Practicum all give artists the opportunity to develop work with the support of Primary Stages staff, in addition to allowing writers to meet actors and directors and visa versa. You can also find hugs and candy if you're into that type of thing.

SO NOW THE FREELIO-DEELIO

When you take a class at ESPA, you are privy to all kinds of ticket discounts and comps to On and Off-Broadway shows (i.e. Born Yesterday, The Elaborate Entrance of Chaz Diety, Gruesome Playground Injuries, etc etc).

Then, if you decide to take another class the following semester, not only do you get a discount as a returning student, but you can apply to be a teacher’s assistant which is OH SO SEXY because you get the class for FREE for doing some copying and TA-ey type stuff that really doesn’t require much extra time or effort. So if free tickets don't pay you back the full price of your class, TAing most surely will not to mention the invaluable connections you'll make. Those things = great deal.

FULL FRONTAL...

Oh yeah, and in the interest of full frontal disclosurama, I met the above theater artists in a 2009 workshop given by Second Stage's bad ass Chris Burney (that's right, I said bad ass). Eight of us from that class came together to form the above-referenced 15th Floor, inspired by CB's class and TDF's book Outrageous Fortune. Our goal - fiercely supporting new work and the bitchin' artists that make that work possible.

The 15th Floor by primarystages

We're not the only collective of artists that have come together from ESPA. I hear there's another group going by the name Cusi's Cram and we might have a write-off this fall (alcohol and baked goods will be involved). So, basically what I'm sayin' is, I know of what I theaterspeak. I've gotten hugs; I've eaten candy; I've been a sexy TA and so can you. I wouldn't lead you astray. It's better than Viagra (from what I've heard).

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

There’s only one catch. You have to sign up. Like now. The classes start next week and there are only a few spots left, so grab them while you can kiddies, cuz if you miss out, you’ll have to wait til next semester which ain’t so bad but who wants to wait when you can have all that as soon as next week. Sweet!

The Einhorn School of Performing Arts at Primary Stages is located at 307 W. 38h Street, Suite 1510. New York City. To take your creative/professional life by the horns, check it out online, contact 212.840.9705 or email espa@primarystages.org.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of Free (or almost free) Things All Theater Artists in New York Should Know which includes cool stuff like health care, theater tickets, beauty services, and arts organizations that want to give you money. That’s right, Theaterspeak loves you like your mama does.

Playwright/Actor Greg Keller Plays Ball - In More Ways Than One

2011-05-30T22:32:00.007-04:00

"There’s a feeling of pressure to capitalize - and capitalize is kind of a weird word because there’s not a lot of capital to... “ize”, but to seize the opportunity when people are interested..."

When did you start writing?

I always sort of noodled around but my first full length play I tried to write was started when I started acting grad school so like eight years ago... and I sort of finished it at the end of grad school, so really I finished my first play five years ago, but had written short little things before that, and had made a couple short films. When I was in college a friend of mine had a radio show from 3am to 6am and we would write this radio serial for it every week but yeah, plays, for like 6 years or something... so I’m a much greener playwright than actor.

When did you start acting?

I first acted in high school in New York but I was really like a jock, but at a pretty nerdy school so... not like ‘I’m wearing my varsity jacket to school’ kind of jock but... somebody dropped out of a play and I was in this class at school that was kinda like an acting class, and somebody asked me to do the play and I remember I missed a volleyball scrimmage to do it, and I got benched in the first game of the playoffs and we lost and it was very tragic, and then basically I applied to college based on where I thought I could play basketball... but then I didn’t make the team so I started acting.

Did it come easily to you?

Yes and no. I think I was always interested in making people laugh and being goofy so that idea wasn’t foreign but I think that people who know me would think it’s kinda weird that I’m an actor because I’m not the most extroverted of dudes. I didn’t really think I was going to act when I got out of undergrad and I started interning at a film company. I was going to write and direct films and then I was answering phones and sort of doing P.A. stuff occasionally, which wasn’t the most creative, and I kinda missed acting, so like six months after I got out of undergrad, I was like, ‘I think I need to give it a shot,’ and I ended up going back to the National Theater Institute and taking a bunch of classes. Then once I kind of did it a little, I stuck around.

When you graduated from acting grad school and had also written some, what were you thinking at that point, in terms of what you were going to do next?

I think I had always wanted to write and I had spent the last ten years reading plays and being involved in the theater, so that’s the form that I most thought of... but I think I was always scared to write.

More scary than acting?

Maybe when I started acting it was scary but I don’t remember that anymore... but I think it’s more vulnerable. It’s a different kind of vulnerability and for me a scarier one. You can always, as an actor, say ‘well I didn’t write it, blame that idiot’. So yeah, it feels a little more naked but I got over that. I mean, I’m still getting over that. So I think I was like, ‘I would love to do both things’. There’s definitely New York theater people that I admire that maintain that or did do it at one point. I’m a big Wallace Shawn fan and, I mean, both his work itself, but also that ethic that him and Andre Gregory kind of have of ‘we’ll put this on in our living room, and we’ll rehearse it for twelve years, and it makes us happy, and if people come, great, and if they don’t then we’re doing it because we love it, and we love investigating it.’ Granted it doesn’t really financially support you to do the Master Builder in your living room, but...

I have a friend who graduated from NYU acting grad school and some of his friends are booking big jobs and he’s stressing. How did you feel when you got out?

Well, definitely you feel some kind pressure to take advantage of the “heat”. There is a cache when you go to one of these places that people are checking you out and you feel like you have a limited amount of time before it will go away.

At the same time, I went to NYU after having been on the streets of New York plying my trade for years, and being very used to being an out of work actor, so it wasn’t really anxiety-provoking in the same way. I was a little more experienced at living my life and was pretty realistic about life as an actor, as opposed to some kids that had gone straight from undergrad, which is a little more daunting – you step out into the world and it can’t really prepare you for the existential void of your own personhood, and being like ‘what do I do if nobody is telling me what to do with my days?’. And because I had laid the foundation already in New York, I did end up working a decent amount when I got out of school, which was partly helped by school but partly because I had already made x amount of connections, and then, of course, I can say it wasn’t that scary, but then you would also notice that two years after graduating from grad school I went back to a writing fellowship at Julliard.

You got into Juilliard with the play you wrote in grad school?

Yeah, actually, before I submitted it to Juilliard, I had gotten into the Cherry Lane Mentor project.

Did someone recommend you for that?

Basically, I knew the program existed and I looked at the list of nominators and I happened to know one of them, and I sent him the play and he was like, ‘yeah I’ll recommend this’.

What was that experience like?

It was great.

Did it give you more confidence as a writer?

Totally. You’re just kind of hungry for any kind of acceptance and we had done it at NYU and it had gone really well, but I also knew it was a really friendly audience and supportive world, and the stakes were a little higher this time with strangers coming to see it and evaluating it and that was scary but also really helpful, and just another step helping me to convince myself that I could do it.

What was Juilliard like?

It’s not school, proper. There aren’t any classes, just a workshop once a week and a occasional public reading with students or a production, but that was great for me because I had just gotten out of a really intense (acting) program and didn’t want that. You basically read a play a week and you talk about it and you’re absorbing what makes a play and what makes a play work, and further developing your aesthetic. It’s super supportive - both Chris (Durang) and Marsha (Norman) are, and I think they sort of cast the class in a way that is not so competitive, which is really helpful.

When you got out of there, what was your trajectory?

I just got out a year ago and it’s a similar feeling of, ‘ I need to have a play done’.

Do you have an agent or did you get one through that process?

Yeah I did.

Has that helped you?

Definitely. As an actor, it’s very rare that I get a job just out of an audition. People ask me to do things because they know me or have seen me in the past and I think in the writing world, there’s some of that as well, and because I am so much newer to it, I don’t have any of those connections, and people don’t know me as a writer so my agent is a huge help, and gives me access to places... so yeah I feel really lucky to have her.

There’s a feeling of pressure to capitalize - and capitalize is kind of a weird word because there’s not a lot of capital to... “ize”, but to seize the opportunity when people are interested. A need to write good stuff and get it produced now, so that I can get something produced in the future, but also, because I’ve been kicking around the acting world for so long, I have sort of a built-in patience and knowledge that it’s a slow process, so whereas maybe in my twenties, I was more frantic about when I’m going to get a job, now I kind of see that some of my legwork did actually pay off in some way, and you just aren’t sweating things as much.

Speaking of that, do you think you have acquired more balance as you’ve gotten older or were you pretty balanced then?

It’s changed. In my twenties, I was just acting really so mostly my plan was work as much as possible and stay busy. If you’re not in a show, get in a class - also, because I wasn’t writing, I didn’t have a creative outlet in my down time, so yeah, my philosophy was ‘stay busy’, and now I feel like that’s never a challenge. There are so many things I should be doing and plays that are half written, or things to apply for, or insurance to try to claim that I’m never at a loss for how I’m going to stay busy.

I think I was a little cavalier about ‘oh I can do both. When I do a play at night, I’ll just write a play during that day,’ and you realize that that’s really hard. You only have so much creative or psychic energy and when you’re acting, it really is incredibly demanding, both if you’re in rehearsal and even if you’re not. If you’re auditioning, you’re reading an entire play and you’re spending time preparing, so it’s tough. I’m learning that it’s really important to carve out time for both things. I had the fantasy that I could write in the two hours between auditions if I have a break, but I’ve learned that I’m the kind of writer that needs to sit in front of the computer for hours miserably before anything will come out so I need to have a big chunk of time blocked out for me to stumble on anything interesting

When you’re at your computer for that chunk of time, do you try to stay away from surfing the web or Facebook and whatnot?

I try and fail. There are friends of mine that install things on their computers that make it impossible to view the web for ten hours and then it comes back magically, and I’ve always thought, ‘come on, really? That’s just will power. I don’t need that.’ Of course, it doesn’t work at all and I check my email every twelve minutes or seconds so I think part of balancing it is getting honest with yourself and really trying to be attentive to what you need.

I never really understood a writers’ retreat or a fellowship that takes you to a cabin for a week. It’s like ‘I have a house and a computer... I’ll just write there.’ And then you see why getting away is kind of necessary, so I think I’ve gotten smarter about what I need. Like I need deadlines, and I need to apply to things.

Something that Ron Van Lieu (my acting teacher at NYU Grad) taught me was that you can play many different actions in a scene but you can’t play two at the same time. You can only play one thing at a time on stage or its just messy and confusing... so if you’re writing, you have to write. You have to get more diligent about protecting the time that you do have. So if you have that chunk you can’t schedule anything during that period of time, but of course you want to because you know you’re going to sit at your computer feeling bad.

Do you ever feel good at your computer?

Yeah, but you have to sort of wade through those rough times.

Some playwrights take a year to write a play; some take a shorter amount of time; some take a lot of time in development and some like to work with actors. What’s your process?

Most things that I’ve written have come sort of stuttering out over a long period of time. I’ve hear about those things where it flies out of the person, and I look forward to having those experiences, but for me it’s sort of like building a chunk at a time, but I think my tendency has been to rewrite as I’m writing which I think is a bad idea.

Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.

It’s hard if I lose interest in the story that I’m telling. It’s tough for me to continue, so I need to constantly be intrigued by whatever I’m writing, but I think I’m learning the value of trying to get to an ending and deal with it on the way back and not obsess over it while it’s coming out of you. It’s two different experiences – writing and rewriting - both are important and need different things, so I think I’m slowly learning how to rewrite.

Do you finish your first draft and give it to people right away, or do you do another draft?

I usually write a couple drafts before I show it. I might give something of mine to people that I’m close to but I wouldn’t send it to a theater or my agent.

Do you have to hear it first before you send it out?

No, I feel like – I don’t know if it’s because I fool myself that because I’m an actor that I can hear it in my head and that’s good enough. It’s probably a terrible mistake. I don’t feel like I need to hear it out loud.

Are you looking for certain things when you give it to people? Are you asking questions or do you just trust their unstructured feedback?

I think that one of the things I learned at Juilliard - prescriptive feedback wasn’t allowed and I think I always thought of that as some kind of politesse. I always thought “I’m tough. I can take it. Give me an idea and If I don’t like it I won’t use it, but if I do I will”, but I think I started to realize that if you’re writing your play, that your play is personal to you, and it’s dangerous to hear too many ideas from other people. It’s always helpful to hear questions and to hear what’s confusing. I used to be so eager about getting advice from everywhere and now I’m a little more specific about what I need, and what I want to know, and what I don’t want to know.

When you have a play in production, how much time do you spend in rehearsal and what kind of feedback do you solicit from your director?

I’ve only had two plays go up. Dutch Masters and The Young Left , my Cherry Lane play. We did Dutch Masters at Labyrinth and in both cases, it was with people I felt free to give my opinion to, outside but also inside the rehearsal room. I mean, I asked first if they were comfortable with it, but I’d be quick to jump in with my six cents and again, similar to the notes idea, I’m learning some of the possible drawbacks of that... my desire to offer my “helpful” advice. They’re all things I should of course know, because as an actor, I’ve experienced multiple opinions in a room and, again, would always like to think, “yeah but we’re adults and we could be like ‘ok that was two ideas in the room, what are we going with or what do we think?” But just there being multiple opinions in the room can be - even if you’ve decided on one – the other one can stay with people.

I’ve also been trying to rewrite during these rehearsal processes, so I also look forward to the day that I’m putting up a play and it’s just done. I know plays are never finished, they’re abandoned, but I think your question was, ‘do I like being in the room?’ and I think that because I’m a green, nervous writer, sometimes I like being there and babysitting it, but I also think it’s probably healthy not to be there a lot of the time. I don’t always love a playwright in the room all the time when I’m acting.

I’ve wondered about that. Does it make you more on guard as an actor?

It depends on the situation, but it can.

So what do you have coming up?

I'm in a new Daniel Goldfarb play at MTC, called Cradle and All. We started previews in May and then I go to the Berkshires at the end of June for Dutch Masters and I put my writer hat on.

Do you have something brewing or working on your desk at the moment?

I have a couple things: a play that I hope to bring to the Labyrinth summer retreat and a couple other things that are in varying states of done-ness.

Do you work on multiple plays at once?

I hit a problem spot in one and then I abandon it for months and cheat on it with another play, and then come back and try to work myself out of a hole. I remember Jose Rivera said something that I think is right, but I haven’t done yet, which is that you can work on two things at once, but you shouldn’t be doing two drafts at once. If you’re doing two things at once, one should be a first draft and the other should be a second or third draft because they are two different impulses and you should allow the creative impulse its full due.

You can see Greg in MTC's Cradle and All at City Center Stage I now through June 19th. Get info and buy tickets here. His play Dutch Masters begins previews July 19th at the Berkshire Theatre Festival and runs through August 6th.

Einhorn School of Performing Arts is sending five emerging writers to Detention, and they like it.

2011-05-04T21:27:00.031-04:00

"We're talking the Sex Pistols, the Stooges, the Ramones, the Clash. It's going to be AMAZING. And there will be blood."

'"Then Sarah Palin took over. The rest was more of a mood-setter."

Each month, The Einhorn School of Performing Arts produces a performance series in an East Village bar where selected ESPA students are "challenged to write a short piece based on a theme and a list of unusual constraints". This month's theme is Punk Rockstar and the constraints are indeed "unusual".

The selected writers were given a mysterious packet by their guest artistic advisors, Daniel Talbott (Artistic Director, Rising Phoenix Rep) and Denis Butkus (RP Artistic Associate). The packet included a song, an image, a description of an act of violence or nudity, and supposedly,“a vial of Angeline Jolie’s blood (while supplies last)”.

"The assignment is going to be extreme," said Tessa LaNeve, ESPA director and Literary Manager (pictured with Daniel Talbott), "and I don't mean the hair band from the 1990's. We're talking the Sex Pistols, the Stooges, the Ramones, the Clash. It's going to be AMAZING. And there will be blood." Ms. LaNeve advised the playwrights to write material that wouldn't be for "the faint of heart”.

The plays are then quickly produced/curated within the month by Ms. LaNeve, who selects the writers, actors and directors, to work with a varying group of guest advisors that have included the Lark’s Director of Offsite Programs and Partnerships Lisa Rothe, Primary Stages Associate Artistic Director Michelle Bossy and the Artistic Director of Keen Company, Carl Forsman.

“It was a unique experience,” says ESPA student, 15^th Floor member and two-time Detention writer, Judith Leora, “because you are actually being produced and your only role is to focus on the writing and enjoy the rehearsal process. It’s more like the real world. So many times (as an emerging writer) you’re producing yourself and working with your friends. This was a great way to build new relationships and gain experience collaborating.”

The selected Punk Rockstar writers, Mariah MacCarthy (pictured left), Gavin Davis, Louise Schwarz, Kathryn Hathaway and Matthew Heftler were given two weeks to write; two weeks to rehearse; and one afternoon to tech.

The final result can be seen one night only for two shows, this Friday, May 6^that Jimmy's 43 - an East Village bar that is also home to Rising Phoenix Rep's Cino Nights (Nov.'10 Theaterspeak) who uses a similar down-n-dirty, in-the-trenches producing model.

Theaterspeak interviewed this month's writers about being in Detention.

Why did you decide to submit your name for this particular Detention?

Gavin Davis: I used to be in a punk rock band, and the last play I wrote for an ESPA class was about said Punk Rock band, and so the idea of doing a short play exercise called "punk rockstar" seemed an appropriate fit.

Mariah MacCarthy: Because I want to be Daniel Talbott when I grow up.

Louise Schwarz: I am a big fan of sickly violent horror movies, and my "youth culture" was definitely punk rock, so I confess the idea of violence and punk really appealed to me. Also, the fact that I'd have to commit to writing it before I even knew what my images and act of violence were was a fun challenge.

Kathryn Hathaway: I was finally available; Daniel and Denis are my favorites; and I’ve been looking for any excuse to rock a fauxhawk.

What was in the mysterious punk rock packet that Denis and Daniel gave you?

Gavin Davis: (pictured) I had a few music videos, The Clash and Sonic Youth who are two of my all time favorite bands, and then a third video by Joy Division, which was a fine enough song, but I think if you look at my play you'll see what I thought of that video...I also had a few paintings and photographs of naked people which is always fun, and my act of violence was "ripping off your own fingernails". I took some creative license with that piece.

LS: "Making love with a stranger or enemy" was the act I was assigned, and there were four songs -- a Sex Pistols song, a Cyndi Lauper song, a Nirvana song, and a Courtney Love song. I also got a couple of photos of some very naked sexual situations that appeared to be in a public bathhouse of some sort.

KH: Naked rainbow stripes, naked kissing with cake batter, Iggy Pop, The Smiths, stretching foreskin, Dropkick Murphys. I was not chosen to receive this alleged vial of Brangelina blood, and am pretty hurt.

MM: Two pictures of youngish beautiful men: one with a gun in his mouth, one dead in a bathtub. Music. An instruction to include "anal intercourse with Sarah Palin's fist."

How did the packet influence your writing?

MM: Sarah Palin took over. The rest was more of a mood-setter.

GD: I think the nude paintings, and my opinions on them informed my writing a lot, (it's pretty much the entire plot of the play), and then the music helped shape my characters. I sort of shied away from the act of violence, although it is included, and a big part of the main character, but the violence of it didn't serve the play I was writing, so that, as I said before, I took some creative license with.

KH: We were told to use the content of the packet as “suggestive, impressionistic muses” so I wrote most of the play as I listened to the tracks that Denis and Daniel sent, and before brainstorming scenarios, I wrote some teensy stories inspired by the images. I think I may have aped one of the Stooges’ lyrics and plopped it into the end of the play somewhere. Thanks, Iggy!

Louise Schwarz (pictured): I listened to the songs a few times and tried to call back to my much more debaucherous days. Doing so made me feel embarrassed and ancient, of course, so I ended up playing with those ideas of "you're too old for this!" that essentially plague every day of my life.

You had about two weeks to write your ten minute play. What was the process like? (Did you procrastinate? Drink too much and start writing profanity on your flesh, develop a Sid Vicious sneer?)

MM: I wrote it in about an hour at the very last possible minute.

KH: I had this brilliant idea in Port Authority at 3 AM one morning to write a play about these two vaguely scary, vaguely Eastern European gentlemen who stroll into this luxury eyewear boutique, argue about what rims will impress their vaguely terrifying offstage boss, and kill the salesman because he is very earnest and reminds them of a rent-a-cop from their checkered past. I actually wrote a lot of this play down. Before I realized. That it was obviously all wrong. Then I finished Season 4 of Dexter. Then I wrote a different play.

GD: Absolute procrastination. Actually, I had worked very diligently on a play and was really enjoying it and took lots of time and care and finished it well before the deadline, and then, the morning it was due, I wrote the play that is being performed. It is much better than what I had been writing. Everything works out...

How have you used your punk rock guest advisors Daniel Talbott and Denis Butkus (if at all)? Did you call them in the middle of the night with burning questions? Did you curse their names at your computer? Did you ask for a hug?

MM: I hugged them when they came to my play that was up in April, THE ALL-AMERICAN GENDERF*CK CABARET. Mostly I just smile with delight when Daniel sends us emails because they are epic in their enthusiasm and lack of periods.

GD: I greatly, greatly, greatly admire Daniel Talbott and Denis Butkus, and think that the work they are doing is amazing stuff. Sadly, I didn't have any last minute writer emergencies or problems with which to call them, because my director, Philip Gates is a total rock star and put the play up beautifully.

KH: I am embarrassed to admit that I have yet to ask Daniel and Denis for hugs. Gah. I DID squeeze Denis’s arm this afternoon though, and that was pretty magical.

How has the casting and rehearsal process been? Is it any different (better/worse/whatever) than other experiences in the past?

MM: I was at GENDERF*CK for a month, so when this runs I'll have attended precisely one rehearsal. But I hear they are going amazingly. I kind of like being surprised--people come up with awesome shiznit when I'm not there.

LS: I got assigned a director and a cast and everyone showed up ready to work with tons of questions and ideas, so I have no complaints! (Also, I've worked with Thomas Poarch -- one of the actors -- before and was thrilled that he ended up in my play, what with his being completely awesome and all.)

GD: It has been great. We did have a last minute casting change but got a replacement in and had an amazing rehearsal last night, and have the rest of the week to put this thing on its feet. It could not have gone better. I got very lucky. I am a very hands-off writer. I put a lot of faith and trust in the director, and tend to stay away from rehearsal as much as I can. I tend to try to direct when I am there and that is an instinct I fight all the time. It helps to have a director as great as Philip, who totally gets the play and gets the sense of humor there.

Kathryn Hathaway: Completely different! I’ve never had a show cast sans me having to do anything. The cast was just conjured. It was too easy. It made me nervous. I’ve worked on a few projects recently where rehearsal time was even more limited than in this process, so that part felt relatively leisurely. For me. I’m sure for the actors it was the least leisurely.

How do you normally work/write/develop a play and has this process been any different?

KH: For me, this opportunity was an exercise in violence. I don’t usually use particularly violent language in my work, so I set out to explore ways in which I could amp up the language, while keeping the tone of the piece (hopefully) funny and sweet. I’d also never written a 10-minute play before and man, those guys are tricksy! My absurdly wonderful playwright friend Sarah Hammond told me that a short play has to be a centrifuge from the very beginning down to the moment that matters the most. I’m sure I didn’t reach centrifuge levels at all in this one, but one day. One day.

MM: I tend to procrastinate and then write in bursts, so, this was typical.

GD: I normally do a lot of readings and re-writes before trying to stage any of my work. I tend not to trust my plays, which is probably a habit I should get over, but I take a lot of care to make sure every word is exactly how I want it and in the right place before going into rehearsal, because once you start adding all of the rehearsal elements, things start snowballing quickly, and you have to be sure your script is the script you want, because it's usually the last thing you have time to worry about in rehearsal.

You all have taken classes or workshops at Espa. How has Espa influenced your work/artistic life/eating-sleep-sexual-dating habits? Please be specific.

MM: I met my boyfriend at ESPA. His name's Larry Kunofsky. We started a theater company, Purple Rep, and just finished our first mini-season. May 2nd was our two-year anniversary. ESPA actors and writers are also some of my best friends/favorite people, and I have a tendency to cast ESPA peeps in my plays. So, ESPA=essential.

GD: Specific, eh? Hm...I work a day job at a talent agency, and do a lot of work on the business side of theater, and this semester at ESPA I took a class in marketing/production for playwrights, which was all about networking and agents and all that good stuff. It was funny because I started taking stuff I was learning in class back to my job and applying it to both my job and to my writing. I think Jack Donaghy would call that "synergy".

LS: I've taken classes each semester at ESPA since the spring of 2009, and they have kept me happily busy and productive. Some of the teachers have become my very trusted mentors and others have just been a lovely semester of helpful feedback. ESPA has been my artistic community in ways that I had desperately needed for some time. It does, however, always make my Sundays extra stressful because for some reason I foolishly keep signing up for Monday classes -- why do I do that? Monday deadlines are cruel.

KH: I have absolutely adored the two writers I’ve studied with at ESPA – Keith Bunin and Kara Lee Corthron. Their feedback, guidance, and perhaps (perhaps) most importantly, physical presence each week in my life, with ‘DEADline’ scribbled across their foreheads, has been invaluable. Totally fed me snacks, totally helped me get into grad school. I am also really into Tessa’s emails. Her emails really get me.

What's your play called and what's it about?

MM: YOU'LL THANK ME LATER. It's about a young woman who's in love with Sarah Palin and gets her to speak at her college. Things do not go as planned or hoped.

GD: My play is called PAINT ME. It's about an artist, his model, a painting, and an underwear fetish.

LS: The Nostalgia Cure. In many ways it's about shame.

KH: My play is called Paddy Wacker and it unfolds in the powder room of a funeral parlor as a cop, her sister, and her sister’s girlfriend deal with the death of Grandpa Joe (who was kind of a D-Bag.)

Who inspires you?

GD: Bruce Norris, who just won the pulitzer prize for his play CLYBOURNE PARK. Read it. See it. Absorb it. It is deliciously snarky and shines a really big fucking mirror on its audience in the funniest, most brilliant way.

KH: In this moment - Jonsi, the human being who invented allergy pills, Amy Poehler, Jeanine Tesori, Johnny Weir, and Mark Rylance.

MM: Generous people.

What inspires you right now?

MM: The sunshine. The high, and exhaustion, of just having produced Purple Rep's first mini-season--the feeling that I can do anything. Larry Kunofsky.

GD: I follow a lot of politics, and it helps me really really hate the world and all of these people we are stuck with on it. There is a lot of absurdist comedy in the real world. Yikes.

LS: My plays rarely employ any beautiful language and are instead about the tempo of language, so I am always inspired by the rhythm of people around me and how they fill the moments that they are choosing their words.

KH: Hmm, the new Fleet Foxes album, the jangling noise my allergy pills make in their special pocket in my bag, Jean Stafford stories, butter, and Little Dorrit.

Anything you'd like to add?

KH: I noticed that my friend Mark Sanderlin was just interviewed on this blog, so this seems as good a time as any to reveal the existence of our Karen and Richard Carpenter (drag) cabaret Rainy Gays and Mondays, coming soon to killin' it at the MAC Awards near you.

GD: This is the first time I have ever been interviewed as a writer. I feel very special.

Punk Rock Detention takes place Friday, May 6th at 7 and 10pm at Jimmy's 43 (43 East 7th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue). Reservations can be made at litassist@primarystages.org.

The next Detention will be June 3rd, with guest adviser Jackson Gay (Directory of Scarcity and The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow). The plays must all incorporate a song written in the 1980's and will be presented as a play/film.

Packawallop's New Play by Kari Bentley-Quinn Takes Flight

2011-04-28T20:01:00.014-04:00

"When one of your actors pops an air mattress with her heel while rehearsing a spanking scene, a sense of humor is required..."

What was the inspiration for Paper Cranes?

Paper Cranes was inspired by a book I’d read as a child called Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr. It told the story of Sadako Sasahi, a 12 year old Japanese girl who got leukemia ten years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. When she found out she was sick, she wanted to fold one thousand paper cranes (called senbazuru; it is thought that anyone who finishes all the cranes will be granted a wish). The book said that she didn’t finish folding before she passed away, but her friends and family finished them for her. This turns out to be a bit of creative license; Sadako did finish the cranes and continued to fold up until her death.

The play started when I was on a flight to Chicago. I had this image of a woman folding cranes by her husband’s bedside come to me and just started writing. There was something so beautiful to me about this little girl creating in the face of illness and destruction. I think humans strive to keep people alive (including themselves) in various ways. We all try to cheat and evade death and loss, and I think that’s part of what I was exploring here. I was also interested in talking about sexuality as both life force and as a way to avoid intimacy. Sex and death are opposite sides of the same coin, and there’s definitely exploration of the two extremes in the piece.

The rest of the inspiration came from various aesthetic obsessions, but the Sadako story was the catalyst.

What was the development process like with Packawallop?

I wrote the first draft of the play by working with The Pack, a once-monthly meeting of writers, directors and actors. It is the brainchild of Alejandro Morales and Scott Ebersold, the founders of Packawallop Productions. I brought in the first monologues for Paper Cranes in late 2009. The response from the group was really positive, so I kept bringing pieces of the play in every month for over a year. The feedback was so vital to me. Susan Louise O’Connor (who plays Amy) has been creating the part with me from the beginning. I am so lucky to be working with someone as talented and giving as Susan is.

Once the play was finished, I had two internal developmental readings where we brought in actors. That was how we found Sarah Lord (who plays Maddie). Alejandro Morales worked very closely as dramaturg and was helpful beyond measure. I felt nurtured and supported through the whole process, and they definitely kept me on top of my game.

Because I am on the board of directors and contributed some of my own money to the show, I was also intimately involved in the actual producing aspect of the show and worked closely with Jay Aubrey, our producing director. I have learned a lot about fundraising and the inner workings of a company. It’s been fascinating.

How was that development different from other experiences you've had?

This is only my second full production, but it was very different. My first production was in FringeNYC, and it was white-knuckle, guerilla theater. I had an amazing producer, cast, and creative team, but it was a panicked time and we only had 5 performances. I got more time to craft and refine this play and we have 16 performances. Working with Packawallop from start to finish on a show is an enviable experience. One thing that Packawallop does better than anyone else is creating elegant, beautiful productions with superior attention to detail. Paper Cranes is no exception. I think that it is a really beautiful show. I’m so proud of it.

How did you work with your director, Scott Ebersold?

Scott and I have been friends for several years. I found that working with him was a really comfortable and collegial experience. We had lots of long discussions (sometimes over martinis!) and were, overall, on the same page most of the time. We worked as a team to make this show the best it could be. Scott trusted me to do the right thing by the script, but there were times he’d write a note to me saying “what if this line went towards the end of the scene, because then it leads into this next scene?”, and the light bulb would go off. He was very focused on the transitions and the relationships between scenes, and that focus helped me immensely with the shape of the piece.

I was in the room for most rehearsals, and he let me have a great deal of input. He was so generous with his vision and time. As a result, I think everyone has had a good experience working on this show. Scott is a huge, huge part of why the play is what it is, and I’m immensely grateful to him. He also bought me Cadbury Mini Eggs the other day. Anyone who can anticipate my need for carbohydrates is my ideal collaborator.

And the rest of your team?

My cast is totally amazing and the nicest group of people you’ll ever meet. We’ve had a total blast getting to know one another, and I consider all of them dear friends. Kyle Fox, our assistant director, provided so much intelligent and helpful insight during this process. He’s become a fast friend and has a big future ahead of him. Amy Schott, our stage manager, brings a professionalism and precision that keeps our show moving seamlessly every night. We also have a fabulous team of designers that I am so glad didn’t kill us with our constant last-minute changes. We all got along really well, and we laughed a lot. When one of your actors pops an air mattress with her heel while rehearsing a spanking scene, a sense of humor is required!

How did you get involved with Packawallop?

I had known Alejandro Morales for a while (he directed one of my readings and was the first champion of my work), and I went to see the FringeNYC production of his play The Silent Concerto. That’s when I met Scott and the rest of the gang. The first Packawallop show I worked on was Adam Szymkowicz’s Nerve. I helped with concessions and box office. Ever since then, I’ve had some role to play in the company, and I am now a member of the board. It’s a great company and I’m honored to be a part of it. Having an artistic home is so important, and getting to make theater with your friends is the best.

What's your writing schedule?

I’d love to say that I get up at 5 every morning and write, but it’s not that way. I don’t really have a schedule. I work a 9-5 job and try to see as much theater as I can, so my schedule is erratic. I will say that I do try to write something every day. Sometimes it’s a blog entry, sometimes it’s a one pager in my notebook, sometimes it’s a scene. I’ve realized that I write much more than I think I do, and the majority of said writing does not happen when I am on a computer. Paper Cranes was written almost entirely in notebooks.

What is inspiring you right now?

Everything. There’s so much amazing work happening in theater right now. I am proud to be a part of this season in NYC. I also just finished reading Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann, and it is one of those rare books that leaves you feeling changed after you finish it. I find spring in NYC very inspiring.

What are you working on now?

Paper Cranes has taken up most of my time over the past 6 months or so, but I’m gearing up to work on brand new stuff this summer. I just started a new full length play that is (so far) about a flight attendant who is the sole survivor of a plane crash and what her life is like after. I am also collaborating with my friend Jason Loffredo on a new musical, which is challenging and awesome.

Paper Cranes runs until May 8^th at The Access Theater (380 Broadway, 4^th Floor at White Street, NYC). For more information or to purchase tickets you can go to www.packawallop.org.

The New Musical AT THE EDGE Brings Kids, Identity, and Gender Front and Center

2011-04-26T13:08:00.013-04:00

Kat is not an average 15-year-old girl. She has transferred schools, changed her name, and is in the process of secretly transitioning from male to female. She is one of four teenagers balancing at the edge of who they are and who they must become.

What was the inspiration for At The Edge?

Alexandra H. Rubin: I started writing "At the Edge" under the title "Yet to be Titled" when I was 17. I had just come off of a month of intense theater training at Mason-Gross at Rutgers and wanted to write a story about kids my age in a truthful way. I just felt like there wasn't much out there that contained the language and means of communication that high school students actually used. The characters and story have changed dramatically since that first draft, which was a straight play, but that mission still presides.

From what I understand, you've been working on this for a couple years. Take us through the development process.

Mark Sanderlin: "Yet To Be Titled" existed for several years before I came on board. We met when I music directed a show Alex was directing and afterward, she approached me about turning her play into a musical. We developed five or six songs and put together a concert reading of the show, then called "Tangled", with large chunks of the script at Manhattan Theater Club in April 2010.

It was performed there by four very talented actors doubling many of the roles - though we had every intention of writing in an ensemble. After that, we drafted a more complete version of the show with a whole slew of new characters and put together some table readings.

In January of this year, we put up a staged reading at Theater for the New City with director McKenna Dabbs at the helm, for which we also went through the excruciating process of retitling the show because of Disney's new movie. We're now at The Tank in Midtown for a three-night engagement with a brand new 90-minute, no intermission format and back to a four person cast (down from up to 10 in previous versions!).

How did you grow the collaboration?

MS: Lots of caffeine. And then she throws things at me.

AHR: I throw soft things. I always say Mark was more like my co-director. We were able to speak very freely and respectfully with each other almost instantly. When I asked him to write "At the Edge" with me, that relationship hit a lot of growth spurts. Honesty is the prevailing component that makes this partnership work. If we don't like something or are struggling, we tell each other. If we disagree, we talk (and sometimes fight) it out, but we always come to a conclusion that works best for the show. That's been our motto since day one: "Everything for the good of the show."

MS: I always thought our motto was "Don't give me that look!"!? I've learned a lot about how to be a good artistic collaborator through this process, and I think that it's something that is grossly overlooked in most training that artists, writers, etc. receive. Learning how to handle compromise in situations where "compromise" is sometimes a dirty word is ultimately useful in every facet of life, in my opinion.

AHR: I totally agree. And I'm not even sure that what we do is "compromise". I think we present our different sides and are able to hear each other well enough that we find the best way. Our greatest obstacle, I think, is closely related to that. Mark and I tend to get frustrated in the same way. When you have a partner that deals with frustration differently, you take turns being the cool head. When Mark and I get aggravated, we deal with each other in the same way, which just aggravates us more! Fortunately, we both diffuse frustration in the same way: by making jokes.

Any advice for other new or young collaborators?

AHR: TALK ABOUT EVERYTHING! If you hold onto something and don't let your collaborator in on it, whether it's a problem you have with something they've written, or letting them know that you need a break, it's going to be hugely detrimental. Mark and I joke that we're each other's most serious relationship, but there's truth in that joke. You need to communicate in a working partnership as much as in a romantic one. Maybe more since you can't temporarily diffuse the situation with sex...

MS: ...

AHR: :)

Did you always know you wanted to do musical theater? How did you both come
to this form?

MS: I still don't know that I want to do musical theater! I was an actor when I was younger and grew up around the theater so I guess it's in my blood whether I like it or not. In high school, my creative life took a different turn and I was focused almost entirely on songwriting and performing. That stayed the same into college until Alex dragged me kicking and screaming back into the theater, for which I will never forgive her.

Songwriting and performing is still something I'm very involved in, but between "At The Edge," my involvement with the BMI Workshop and my unfortunate propensity for bursting into song, I'm not sure I will ever get rid of musical theater. Maybe they're working on a new kind of Valtrex for that.

AHR: Musical theatre: yes. Writing: no. I also started as an actress, determined to be in a Broadway musical before I could drive! I started at Hofstra as an acting major, then switched to the Directing BFA program, then added a kind of unofficial Design minor. My first professional theater gig was actually as the costume designer for The Anthropologists.

I had done some writing all through my theatrical meandering, but I really got serious about it in the past two years and it has been like a spiritual awakening. Looking back, I think I was just getting closer to writing each time I changed my focus. I love creating from nothing, building entire lives and worlds from a single thought, and adding music to those worlds is the closest thing I know to magic.

How did you guys choose and work with your director?

MS: You know how sometimes you'll get a stray cat that arrives on your doorstep in the middle of the night, wet and cold and hungry? How they're usually shy and you have to coax them into being interested in anything more than a warm bed and a tuna dinner? McKenna Dabbs is nothing like that. (Though I hear she enjoys both warmth and tuna.)

We told her about the project and she immediately said, "I will direct this." We were both too surprised to speak, but as she continued to tell us what was about to happen, we realized she was saying things that made complete sense and we just acquiesced. It was easier than arguing with her.

AHR: Plus, I'm scared she might beat us up if we said "no." Our working relationship with McKenna (who has directed both our reading at Theater for the New City and our current staged reading) is very interesting. First off, we are all emerging artists with a lot to prove and we are hungry to prove it!

Secondly, we are workshopping our show with her, meaning we make a lot of changes and have a lot of meetings and a lot of phone and text conversations and much too much coffee. From the get go, it was clear that McKenna understood the direction we wanted to go with the piece and having a director that understands your goals and intentions in addition to challenging your choices and helping to shape a show is invaluable.

You have a staged reading coming up this week at The Tank. How did that come about and what are your goals with this presentation?

AHR: McKenna actually brought this opportunity to us. After our reading at Theater for the New City, we had a very clear idea of the revisions we wanted to make and McKenna had directorial developments she wanted to implement. She hooked us up with The Tank through some connections and it was really just a matter of scheduling.

Our goal for this reading is to break into the consciousness of the theater community and its patrons. We're at a point with the show where it is getting very tight and is ready for advanced development such as a legitimate workshop at a theater company. That would be our ideal next step.

Where will you go from there? What's coming up next?

MS: Into the great unknown! We've applied for a number of workshop programs and development opportunities and we're waiting to hear back from many of those before embarking on a definitive next step. We're also really excited to get more of the LGBT community involved in the show. The subject matter of the show is so important, especially given recent events and we want to bring this story to as many people as possible.

What are your writing schedules?

AHR: Mark and I are not yet able to support ourselves on our writing alone. Shocking, I know! I mean, we've been at this for almost two years! Since we both work multiple jobs and have other projects and writing partners, the time we get to spend in the same room together is really important.

When we're heavy in development or rewrites, we set a day or two a week that is devoted to our work together. This is usually when we iron out plot or specific problems with the show and work on songs, since we collaborate on lyrics. When I'm working on book and Mark is away working on music, I tend to write in great spurts. I'll work for five hours straight without getting up and then walk away from the work for a day or two, and come back to it to see how it reads after a little space.

What inspires you?

MS: Books. Music. New York City. Nutella.

AHR: Neil Patrick Harris. That's all the inspiration I need.

Anything you'd like to add?

AHR & MS: Come to The Tank to see us! April 27-29, 2011 at 7:30pm each night! And also, world peace!

At The Edge is Wednesday through Friday, April 27-29, 2011 at 7:30 pm at The Tank (354 W. 45th St. btw 8th & 9th Ave.) Tickets are $12 online and $15 at the door. For more on At the Edge, visit www.edgemusical.wordpress.com.

Theaterspeak's SEXIEST THEATER COUPLE ALIVE!

2011-04-20T20:32:00.003-04:00

Purple Rep Theater Company's Larry Kunofsky and Mariah MacCarthy

Purple Rep's "Gay Play for Straight People (and Gay People, too)" Has Something for Everybody

2011-04-08T00:12:00.003-04:00

Purple Rep's Mariah MacCarthy and Larry Kunofsky

Chana Porter's Besharet Brings Soulfull Poetry to the Heart of Downtown Theater

2011-03-15T15:33:00.020-04:00

"I began looking at my own culture for our magical stories..."

What was the inspiration for Besharet?

When I was around 19, I started writing plays and I dug around for what sparked me. I began reading lots of magical realism like Jose Rivera and Naomi Wallace (while learning about language from Suzan-Lori Parks.) I was obsessed with Marquez, The Master and the Margarita, Blood Wedding, etc.

I began looking at my own culture for our magical stories - particularly the dybbuk and golem myths. Two manifestations of the soul, on opposite sides of the spectrum. The dybbuk is a lost, searching soul stuck inside a living person. The golem is an empty vessel for other people's desires.

I think this says so much about Judaism. Both myths are intersections of the public (the community) and the private. In turn, the community bears witness. It's a better kind of morality. It's not judgment and punishment; it's "now we all look at this together," or so I like to imagine it.

How did you develop the play?

I began this play almost 4 years ago! Some plays happen very fast. This play I feel like I've grown up writing. I had public readings for many of the drafts, over several years (which can be painful - a kind of forced birthing.) I toyed with it into a screenplay. When I met director Scott Rodrigue, I knew this was the person to bring my work to life.

How did you and Scott work together?

Scott is very good at asking questions. I write intuitively. I don't plan. I sit and breath and then I start typing. Scott, with our Dramaturge Rachel Ely, asked me questions. We sat and talked over many months about what might be going on. We drank coffee and tea and sometimes beer. It's a complicated world and it was very important that we explored all possibilities until I felt like we had arrived at the right place.

Can you expand a little more on how your dramaturge, Rachel, worked with you?

She's very generous and inquisitive and loves doing research. She made an incredible Wikipage for the play, with tons of information on it: about the 1980s, Women's Lib, Jewish mysticism, history of birth control, images from Noir films, the paintings of Marc Chagall (which heavily influenced this play.) The Wikipage was accessible to the cast and crew.

One of our goals at AliveWire is to have everyone as collaborator-- designers, actors, everyone. Rachel was a very important link for making that community of artists possible.

I loved the set design and music. How did you originally envision the set and did that change?

Scott LOVES designers, god bless him. It's rare for a director to work so well with both actors and a design team, in my experience. He approached those meetings like the dramaturgy meetings with Rachel and me. They got together and drank coffee and asked each other questions. We make fun of Scott's #1 phrase, which is "What do you think is best?"

I would of NEVER in a million years thought that the set of the play (the office, the lovely Cohen apartment) should be contained at the lake house. Eric's set design really cracked the play open for me. Of course they're all always at the lake house! They're haunted by the past; that's why they can't make a future. That's the power of great collaboration. Everything is elevated.

How did you get involved with AliveWire?

Scott and I met at a theater benefit two years ago. We drank a lot of wine. It became clear we were going to do work together. AliveWire grew out of our many little projects. Suddenly, you're doing the work, and you look around and say, Oh, I guess we need a name. And maybe a bank account? And business cards? Oh, and a website. The business part is still coming. AliveWire was born from necessity, which I love. You could say, our relationship stopped being casual. We had to get committed.

I notice you have a few other projects going on that involve a feature length film and a graphic novel. Can you talk a little about those?

Yes! Kevan Tucker, a lovely director (he did The Unidentified) and I are going to Worcester, MA this summer. We're going to film everyday and edit as we go-- it's an experiment in emergent storytelling, framed as a love song to the city of Worcester. A place dear to my heart.

Delia Gable and I have been creating The Ruthie Chronicles, graphic novel about a woman in Queens at a crossroads. I'm writing and she's making exquisite drawings. I'm so LUCKY to know these people, let me tell you. I really love graphic novels, fantastical ones and intimate memoirs. I'm particularly inspired by Allison Bechdel, Phoebe Gloeckner, Erika Lopez.

Comics are a fantastic medium. YOU CAN DO ANYTHING! I'm very excited about Ruthie. And going to comicons and possibly dressing up like Harry Potter.

What's your writing process like?

I try to not think as much as possible. Yoga is a fantastic practice for getting out of my head. It's important to get out of your mind and into your body. Authentic responses and gestures are so much more complicated and interesting than anything I could plan. Reading poetry or some open text, like a book about meditation, is also helpful in creating a quiet expansive mind-frame. I like to watch my boyfriend watering his plants. That helps too.

You've taken workshops at the Einhorn School of Performing Arts and being part of their community. Can you talk a little bit about why you chose Espa and what you have gained from being involved there?

Espa is how I met the lovely Rachel Ely! And lots of other great people. I've taken some great classes and workshops at ESPA-- my work has been most effected by Cusi Cram and a workshop from Constance Congdon. Marvelous, inspired women.

What's exciting you right now about theater?

Plays that seem impossible. Theaters popping up outside of Manhattan, in the other boroughs. Multi-Media creations! Do-it-with-others funding models.

What's next?

Last night, AliveWire had our reading series at PS122 with Craig Lucas directing a reading of my new play, Leap and the Net Will Appear, with Maria Dizzia as the lead. It's been a stunning, lovely afternoon. I feel like a lucky lady. More chances to work with generous, engaging people that I admire. I hope that's next.

Chana Porter's play Besharet is playing a limited engagement at 9th Theatre Space at PS122: 150 1st Avenue at E. 9th Street through March 27th (Weds - Sun).

Tickets are $18 and can be purchased here or call 212-352-3101. For more information about AliveWire go here.

Chana Porter photo courtesy of David Gibbs/DARR Publicity.
Besharet Photos by R. Perry Flowers.

Resident Director Mia Walker talks American Sexy

2011-02-21T14:05:00.028-05:00

"I procrastinate looking at it and thinking about it until it is so painfully repressed inside me that I have to read it again."

How did you get into directing?

I grew up acting. When I was about seven years old, my mom came home from work to find me standing with my face touching the television screen and crying. She asked me what was wrong and I pointed to one of the Olsen twins in Full House, which was on at the time, and said "I want to be like that." I went on to perform on Broadway and did a little bit of film work. Then, in high school, my drama teacher totally inspired me by assigning us a project to pretend we were directing Neil Labute's play The Shape of Things. I went all out; I imagined setting the play at the Burning Man festival. That project set something off in me - I could feel it.

Then, I went to Harvard for college and a friend of mine, Jack Cutmore-Scott, called me during tech week of his show our freshman year. He wanted another eye, and so I came in and took notes. I ended up helping to make some directorial decisions that week and I felt like my body and mind had been possessed by something so incredibly exciting, I couldn't even process it. All I knew was that I had figured out my place in the artistic world, that I am driven by images and vision.

Jack encouraged me to apply to direct the following year, which I did. I then directed four shows during my time at Harvard, and began directing short films, too. So, in a way, being part of the creative process has always been something I wanted to do. I shifted gears, and am thankful to have found my calling in directing.

What do you like about it? What drew you to that as opposed to other art forms?

It's tough to say I "like" directing. It's more like, I have to be directing. It consumes me - in a good way - it makes me feel alive and makes me deeply compassionate. I aim to move people. I want to tell stories and to make people shiver and shake and smile and think about their lives and show them beautiful images, piercing and strange and familiar all at once. I am drawn to directing because I envision an entire world, rather than just my place in it. Directing is all art forms combined. I am a writer, actor, musician, painter, dancer, photographer all at once when I direct.

How did you get involved in the director's residency program at The Flea.

During spring break of my senior year at Harvard, I went down to spend the week in NYC. It was one of those weeks where you hear about something multiple times, randomly, and you think "I gotta go check this out." For some reason, I kept hearing about The Flea and a show playing there at the time - Girls in Trouble, directed by the artistic director, Jim Simpson. Well, I went to go see it and basically sat in the theater after the show was over for a good fifteen minutes and pretty much decided that I was going to work there some day. I loved the show, the vibe, the space.

I remember thinking to myself that something about The Flea and Jim's direction got to a very essential human element I hadn't felt from a piece of theater in a while. I got on their mailing list and a few weeks later they sent around information about this new residency program. It sounded perfect - my goal after graduating was to meet young artists in the city, form a group of collaborators, and just get right into directing. I interviewed for the residency and was thrilled to find out over the summer that I was chosen as one of the four.

What's the experience been like?

The experience of being a Resident Director at The Flea has been simultaneously challenging, exhilarating, terrifying, and fun. I cannot even begin to tell you how much I have learned and grown as a director (and person). The residency began with us (the four directors) serving as stage managers for the mainstage season, directed by Jim. We stage managed, as a team, both A.R. Gurney's Office Hours and Steven Banks' Looking at Christmas.

I have to say, running a show from a tiny booth, with only a television screen monitor and a headset to watch the show from, is incredibly scary and wonderful. Having worked closely with the technical director at The Flea, I now feel more confident in my knowledge of tech. It's empowering, really. Now, when someone says "we can't do that," I can challenge them and be like, "well, actually, we can, and here's how I'd suggest it..." Then, as we were stage managing, we were also seeking plays to direct. Once I was given American Sexy, I started rolling with that project in mind.

How did American Sexy come to you?

Jim Simpson sent around a ton of scripts last summer to the Resident Directors. He is continually on the lookout for new work, fit for the Bats (the resident acting company at The Flea). The Bats are young and hip - so the work at The Flea tends to be bold and controversial. It's actually a funny story how I came to American Sexy. When Jim sent around the scripts, we were asked to print them and read them all. I went to The Flea to print, and the printer jammed. The only script that printed properly was American Sexy. I had to run to a meeting or something, so I put American Sexy in my bag and decided I'd come back another time to print the others. I didn't end up printing the others.

I went to the Adirondacks with Jim and the Bats for rehearsals for Office Hours and we did a casual reading of American Sexy there, in the wilderness. Something about hearing it out loud struck me, and I told Jim I was interested in it. And I realized it was the script I had been carrying around for a while. And I came across a passage in a Jewish service about birds flying in a canyon (birds and canyons are important symbols in the play). Something about that felt serendipitous. Jim called the playwright, Trista Baldwin, and pitched to her. Trista came down for a more formal reading. She approved casting, and we moved forward.

I am very grateful to Jim, as well as the rest of the staff at The Flea, for believing in me and giving me a chance to direct such a bold, exciting new play. And I am grateful to Trista for writing it and being so intimately part of the process.

While American Sexy had been performed in Minneapolis prior to our production, this version involved some pretty substantial script changes that Trista made throughout the process. That was one of the most exciting things about the process - seeing how our collaboration, and the instincts of the actors and The Flea staff, could inspire a unique version of American Sexy. It's got us written all over it; of course, it is still very much Trista's.

Trista came to early production meetings, and then for a week of rehearsal before tech week. She also came during previews, which was wonderful because she is incredibly important to have in the room. Trista is not only a gifted writer, but a visionary and deeply in touch with the many layers of her script. We needed her to guide us, to lend her vision to the physical world of the play as it unfolded. Together, she and I made changes to the script and blocking up until the day of opening. It was kind of terrifying, but thrilling.

We rehearsed for five weeks and had two weeks of previews. Since the actors and stage manager have day jobs, we worked around everyone's schedules; and, since space at The Flea is limited, we were often rehearsing in an empty office building that The Flea recently acquired. We called it "the dungeon," though it actually ended up being the perfect place to rehearse. The play itself is complicated because it involves a ton of emotional layers - the contradictions of modern humanity, distracted and over-stimulated - so our rehearsal process was intense and often frustrating, but in a good way. We dug really, really deep. And, now, we are all incredibly proud of the show. It has definitely been a labor of love.

What do you find compelling about the play?

American Sexy is about four college students, en route to Vegas, who set up camp at the Grand Canyon. Through the night, they get stoned, they drink, they rage, they sexualize. At the core, though, are intense feelings of love and betrayal, and the paralyzing effects of modern technology on these characters' abilities to humanly connect with each other.

When I first heard the play read aloud, I felt sick. But not sick, like disturbed sick. My emotions weren't processed. I just felt, in my gut, something totally jolted. Jim and Carol Ostrow, the Producing Director at The Flea, have said from the beginning that they felt drawn to American Sexy because it portrays my generation in a way that isn't shown onstage. The language, the pot smoking, the drinking, the "whatever"s and "fuck you"s, the cattiness and the cruelty, the numbness and hypersexualization--all are very real, very present, and yet somehow skirted in contemporary theater. American Sexy is hot, funny, scary, sad all at once. It's tragic, but not Shakespeare tragic. It's my generation tragic. This is our youth now. I'm 22 and I can't critique my generation because I'm part of it, but I can say that Trista is channeling something very real, very honest and pointed about us.

Last night I was on a bus and two girls were sitting in front of me, chatting (loudly) the entire four hours of the ride. I really should have moved, but I didn't because their conversation reflected exactly what American Sexy captures. One of the girls said, "I'm such a terrible friend. I have no interest in anyone's emotional wants or needs." Her friend responded, "Whatevs."

How do you like to work with your writers? (i.e. conversations before hand, how do you like them in the rehearsal room etc)

American Sexy was only my second time working directly with a writer. The first time, I worked with Benj Pasek and Justin Paul on a workshop of their song cycle Edges. So, with American Sexy, I was pretty much figuring out my system as I went. And, of course, this changes with every writer. I felt early on that American Sexy would require the writer's involvement. The script is challenging, and I wanted Trista on board and part of the process. She lives in Minneapolis, so in preparation for her visits we would talk on the phone and touch base. As the process progressed, we grew to be more and more in touch.

In the room, I am very collaborative. Trista and I were so totally on the same page, and her notes were often very helpful for the actors, so when she was in town we were a team, working side by side in rehearsals. She had input in staging, beats, costumes, etc. I loved this and felt it was necessary for this show and this process. I believe very much that theater, or any artistic process, is about collaboration. Wherever the best idea in the room comes from - whether it's the writer, director, actor, or someone's dog - I'm open to it and I believe we build on each other's ideas to arrive at our destination.

How do prepare to work on a new play?

I prepare to work on a new play as I would with any piece of material: I procrastinate looking at it and thinking about it until it is so painfully repressed inside me that I have to read it again and then I pretty much block it out in my head (even though all of it will change later) and then I start listening to music that I feel connects with the piece. I talk with the writer, I keep a journal. For American Sexy, Jim gave me an exercise to try: he asked me to come up with the "who, what, where, when, and how" of the play, to distill the play into two sentences, and to figure out the "bone" of the play - what all the characters are fighting for. At first, I totally resisted this exercise because I didn't want to try to have the answers before going into the process. However, being forced to clarify the text for myself was incredibly crucial and I'm glad I did it.
What excites or challenges you right now about the state of theater? What's on your mind etc?

It's time for my generation to do their thing onstage. And in film. We need a new kind of theater, and a new kind of a movie. A modern kind. Restless, distracted, distant and fucked up. I am so not interested in old voices. I want to write and direct stories that feel all around us. I am excited and challenged by modern language, text messaging, computer screens, hipsters, saying "like" and "oh my god," not being able to fall in love without thinking about the last sex scene you saw in a movie. I'm interested in playing Katy Perry on Pandora out loud on your iPhone while you walk down the street. Katy Perry is on my mind, for some reason. I mentioned that, recently, and the music director of a show I'm working on right now thinks I might be "half-dyke" (her words, not mine). That's also something very much on my mind. It seems like my generation is more prone toward sexual confusion or ambiguity. Something in the air, maybe?

What are you working on now?

I'm assistant directing for Diane Paulus on Prometheus Bound, a rock musical with book/lyrics by Steven Sater (Spring Awakening) and music by System of a Down's Serj Tankian. It's completely awesome.

Who are some theater peeps (or work) that inspire you or have inspired you in the past?

Prometheus Bound is inspiring me right now - on a basic level, I'm usually inspired by what I'm doing in the moment. The story is about Prometheus, the world's first mythic prisoner-of-conscience, so I'm thinking a lot about being bold and courageous. And about rock stars. I'm inspired by Alex Timbers, Sofia Coppola, devised work (haven't done it - would love to).

Recently, I went to see an Italian adaptation of Antigone at the Under the Radar festival at The Public, and was very inspired by the company's aesthetic. It was a man and a woman, and they totally held me captive for seventy minutes. At the end, the actress put a little radio in her sock and ran around, the sad drone of Akon's "Mr. Lonely" sweeping through the space until the end of the play. I thought it was playing out of the radio and was amazed at how clear the sound was, and yet so localized to her constantly moving sock. Then, I realized at the end that there were speakers set up every few feet, standing behind the audience, that were actually projecting the sound. When I saw this show, I was about to be in tech for American Sexy, and, inspired by this radio-sock-tricky-speakers thing, I completely re-envisioned one of the major sound effect moments in the play.

What's your favorite guilty pleasure?

The British TV show Skins (for clarification - I don't mean the MTV version, which is lame). The British original is genius. My brother got me into it (anything cool that I like has been introduced to me by my brother). There's no looking back. Skins is top-grade guilt and pure pleasure.

For more information about Mia Walker, you can go here. American Sexy has been extended thru March 6th at The Flea Theatre.

American Sexy photo credit: Dan Applegate.