Playwrights Foundation Interview: Brian Thorstenson

Hello, This week’s playwright is Brian Thorstenson. Enjoy.

Question: Where do you most often find inspiration?

Brian: Most often? Characters out in the world, people I see and hear during the day. Next would be stories I've read, mostly in the paper. They all act as some kind of trigger to get me thinking about a play.

Question:  What one tip can you offer aspiring playwrights?

Brian: Keep developing your writing practice. That will get you through the ups and downs of working in the theater.

Question: How did you get your start in playwriting?  Where and when was this seed planted?

Brian: I started out as an actor, but got tired of the kind of parts I was doing so I wrote a play for myself. I only realized much later that I had been wanting to write for a very long time.

Question: What was your most embarrassing high school moment?

Brian: Oh god, there were so many starting with horrible haircuts and bad outfits. Maybe dropping my lunch tray in the middle of the cafeteria at the height of lunch and it clanging and clattering to the floor.

Question: Beckett or Stoppard? One word only please.

Brian: Unimaginable.



To learn more about Brian Thorstenson, and the rest of our Resident Playwrights, visit the page below:
www.playwrightsfoundation.org/index.php?p72"

Interview with a Playwright: Garret Groenveld

Where do you most often find inspiration? 
A: I take inspiration from my whole full life: the odd shape of someone's head on the bus, an emotional article in a trashy magazine, notes in public bathrooms or something one of my large extended family says in an off-handed way.  Most of the time, it's just the sound.

What one tip can you offer aspiring playwrights?
A: Don't be afraid to risk sentiment (let your characters be emotional), but avoid sentimentality (unearned emotion) through chosing specific details.

How did you get your start in playwriting? 
A: I won a contest in 8th grade as part of International Day with a short play about Napoleon and Josephine.

Where and when was this seed planted? 
A: I really fell in love with it when I had my first play preformed as part of PlayGround (in the very second Monday night, when it was still on Saturdays) when the Dean of the English Department, who was sitting next to me, gasped at one of my lines.
 
What was your most embarrassing high school moment?
A: When I fell asleep in French class and the teacher called on me.  I didn't know what to say, and I didn't know what the French swearwords were, and my classmate whispered to me the answer that I repeated: "Merde."  "Merde," indeed.
 
Beckett or Stoppard? One word only please.
A: Guare.  

To learn more about Garret Groenveld, visit our Resident Playwright Page at:
www.playwrightsfoundation.org/index.php?p72" 

INTERVIEW WITH A PLAYWRIGHT: this week, featuring Erin Bregman

Hi PF Fans,
We’re going to showcase our Resident Playwrights every Thursday. Today’s subject: Erin Bregman.


Question:
Where do you most often find inspiration?

Erin:
Everywhere! That is part of the problem. Living in San Francisco it's impossible to not encounter pieces of stories everywhere you turn. Sometimes it's a conversation you overhear. Sometimes it's a song. Sometimes it's reading something and wondering what it would be like to live in that place, experiencing those things. Most moments of inspiration for me never find their way into plays, but in some ways that's almost better--then the process becomes a huge sieve of inspired ideas, with only the best of the best finding their way through.

Question:
What one tip can you offer aspiring playwrights?

Erin:
Find people you like and respect, who like and respect you. Then make theater together. Now. Don't wait for permission (or money).

Question:
How did you get your start in playwriting? Where and when was this seed planted?

Erin:
Well, my family tells me I wrote a Thanksgiving play when I was seven, and made my younger cousin curl up on a table to play the Turkey, but since I don't really remember that, I might say 5th grade. A friend and I "adapted" (a/k/a copied almost verbatim) a book into a play that our class then put on for the other upper grades. Though that was my first play, I would probably say the real playwriting seed was planted while doing backyard summer theater in Santa Cruz in middle school. Thirteen of us spent a month writing, rehearsing, and putting on a play directed by an amazing woman named Stephanie Golino. That's where it really got going. And then I attended CSSSA (California State Summer School for the Arts) and took a dramatic writing class there. That was the summer before I was applying for colleges, and I liked the class so much I decided to go to school in a place that offered playwriting courses (though I never officially studied theater). This, totally coincidentally, landed me at UC Santa Barbara while Naomi Iizuka was there and I got lucky enough to take class with her for three years. That was definitely the point of no return.

Question:
What was your most embarrassing high school moment?

Erin:
Besides all of it?

Question:
Beckett or Stoppard? One word only please.

Erin:
Beckett

To read more about Erin, click here: www.playwrightsfoundation.org/index.php?p72"