Interview with a Playwright: Eugenie Chan

  

1.    Where do you most often find inspiration?

In everyday actions -- the small rituals we do over and over again, like making a cup of tea, buying groceries at the same produce store, having the same conversation with the same person.  Seeing what happens when these daily activities are broken.

2.    What one tip can you offer aspiring playwrights?

Get connected.  Work, volunteer, get involved at the theater or organization where they're making the kind of theater you love.

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

In the 5th grade.  I wrote a play about Hermes and his brother Apollo herding cows and made our teacher the cow.  I thought that was so great and empowering.

4.    What was your most embarrassing high school moment?

Um, I'm still in high school, kinda sorta.  I teach.  Often in high school.  So, as a grown up dork, everyday I'm probably embarrassing myself.

5.    Beckett or Stoppard? One word only please.

Beckett.

Eugenie Chan's plays Bone to Pick and Diadem will premiere at the Cutting Ball theater on May 21st, to learn more about Ms. Chan and her work, visit our website.

Interview with a Playwright: Dominic Orlando

 1) Where do you most often find inspiration?

I'm not sure I understand the question.  In his gorgeous unfinished novel, Tulip, Dashiell Hammet has the title character, an ex-con, pestering his old friend, a writer, to take up his life story.  "It's a great story--I'll let you have it".  His friend responds:  "the problem is having too many ideas, not too few".

As for what keep me going:  coffee, toast, intelligent/enthusiastic response to the work.

2) What one tip can you offer aspiring playwrights?

Artistically:  Keep writing and don't let anyone tell you what a play is supposed to look like.
Professionally: Go to grad school.

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

I wrote, directed and performed in my first play, Lieutenant Rockstone and Golds and The Case of The Missing Stones in 5th Grade instead of handing in a science report.  We got the day off to perform the piece for the entire school.  It was the day off that sold me.

 4) What was your most embarrassing high school moment?

My Father picked me up from a party and I puked all over him and the car.  I told him I had eaten too many potato chips.

 5) Beckett or Stoppard? One word only please.

Stupidquestion.


Mr. Orlando will be a teaching his immensely popular 'New Play Bootcamp' course this May at the Playwrights Foundation.  Get a first draft done in a matter of weeks!  Visit website below for details:

http://www.playwrightsfoundation.org/index.php?p=215 

Interview with a Playwright: Tanya Shaffer

1) Where do you most often find inspiration?
The inspiration for most of my major projects has come from international travel. For me, the richness of entering into another culture is fascinating because it shows me alternatives to even the most basic ways of viewing the world which we take for granted. It shakes up my worldview and puts everything in perspective. Within that framework, the inspiration comes from individuals I’ve met in my travels and the dynamics of the relationships that have sprung up between us.
Apart from travel, I’ve drawn inspiration from my own relationships and from political/historical figures and events which I find inspiring. I work very slowly, so it takes a long time for an idea to germinate. I am currently working on a piece inspired by the life of the Buddha, which percolated in my head for about five years before I actually started working on it. With a subject as big as that, it took a long time to figure out what perspective I could bring to it that would be uniquely my own.


2) What one tip can you offer aspiring playwrights? 
Write rather than thinking about writing. Find groups of people, ideally fellow writers, whom you can go to regularly for feedback and support. Form relationships with local theatre companies to the greatest extent possible. And produce your work. If no one will produce it for you, figure out how to produce it yourself, even if it’s on a shoestring, even if it’s just a few performances. Plays need to be performed. You learn so much by getting things up on their feet, and learning that you can produce your own work is tremendously empowering.

3) How did you get your start in playwriting? Where and when was this seed planted?
My parents took me to see a lot of theatre when I was growing up. I acted in my first show when I was eight, and pretty much didn’t stop for the next twenty-five years. I also wrote regularly in my journal since early childhood. At age nine, I wrote in my journal, “I want to be an actor and a writer on the side.” It wasn’t until my last year of college, though, that I started putting theatre and writing together, initially in the form of a solo show. I toured my first solo show for a couple of years right out of college. Then I went on a trip to Central America, and when I started to write a solo show about it I quickly discovered that it didn’t want to be a solo show – it wanted to be a multi-actor play. Now that I’m a mom of two young kids I don’t act much anymore, and the writing has taken center stage, career-wise. I find that very satisfying.

4)What was your most embarrassing high school moment?
I swear to you I don’t remember.

5)Beckett or Stoppard? One word only please.
Stoppard.

Tanya Shaffer's [Incoming Resident 09/10] plays and original solo performances include Baby Taj, Let My Enemy Live Long!, Brigadista, Miss America’s Daughters, and The People in the Park. Her work has been produced by TheatreWorks...

To read more about Tanya, visit the PF website at
http://www.playwrightsfoundation.org/index.php?p=72#Tanya

Interview with a Playwright: Peter Sinn Nachtrieb

1) Where do you most often find inspiration?

From cardiovascular exercise, from actors, from news, from pop culture, from sleepless nights, from music, from non fiction reading, from public transit, from past experiences, and often in the time between when I get in bed and when I go to sleep.

 2) What one tip can you offer aspiring playwrights?

Be willing to look at your writing as a separate entity from yourself.  Thus when making the big cuts and changes that you must make it won't feel like you're cutting your leg off.  It's much easier when you think you're cutting the leg off your child.

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

From a combined love for theatre and comedy.  I started as an actor in plays and musicals as well as being a fan of comedy records, Monty Python, Douglas Adams, etc..  Sketch comedy was my first real writing for stage, then solo performances, then a one act, then short and full length plays when i started wanting to write parts that i would not be particularly good at performing.

 4) What was your most embarrassing high school moment?

Performing a scene from David Mamet's "Edmond" at school assembly.  The one where he strangles the waitress.

 5) Beckett or Stoppard? One word only please.

Yes.

Peter Sinn Nachtrieb is a San Francisco-based playwright whose works include boom (TCG's most produced play 2009-10), T.I.C. (Trenchcoat In Common) , Hunter Gatherers (2007 ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award, 2007 Will Glickman Prize), Colorado, and Multiplex. His work has been seen off-Broadway and...

Visit our website for more information on Peter and all of our Resident Playwrights. 

http://www.playwrightsfoundation.org/index.php?p=72#Peter

Interview with a Playwright: Christopher Chen

1. Where do you most often find inspiration?

Thinking about death.

2. What one tip can you offer aspiring playwrights?

Go deep,deep,deep inside yourself. It's fun!  

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

I initially entered college as a music composition major. Then I wanted to switch to English literature. Then to film. Then I stumbled upon theater which combined all these impulses nicely. I took acting, playwriting, and directing classes at Berkeley and joined an Asian American theater group. I really wanted to direct something so instead of looking for something that would fit my aesthetic, I decided it would be easier to write something on my own. I accompanied my first writing/directing debut on cello.

4. What was your most embarrassing high school moment?

It's all blocked out.

5. Beckett or Stoppard? One word only please.

Beckett

Christopher Chen [Incoming Resident 09/10] is a native San Franciscan. His play Into the Numbers premiered at the Beijing Fringe Festival in September 2009 (translated into Chinese), and won second place in the 2008 Belarus Free Theatre International Contest of Modern Dramaturgy (translated into Russian)…

Visit our website for more information on Chris Chen, and all of our Resident Playwrights.

http://www.playwrightsfoundation.org/index.php?p=72#Christopher