Interview with a Playwright: Steve Yockey

The 2016 Season of Rough Readings continues with a fresh set of new plays still in development. The March Rough Readings features Mercury from playwright Steve Yockey. We were fortunate enough to ask him some questions about this delightfully dark comedy:

Rachel Finkelstein: Thanks for taking the time to speak with us! Much of your work, Mercury included, is so surreal -- what draws you to that? 

Steve Yockey: I love when anyone says “surrealism.” It’s sexy. But as alluring as that label sounds, I honestly can’t own it. Sure, the mythic qualities are definitely there, the unexpected punctures in the natural world, but all of my work adheres to a pretty strict internal logic. There are rules; we’re driving towards something. 

Steve Yockey

I guess for all intents and purposes, it’s really just dark realism with some pretty grand theatrical gestures. I’ve always been fascinated by taking these intimate, very human stories and placing them right at the edge of something epic in size or unknown. Seeing the scale of those two things create friction. That’s where most of my plays live. Mercury takes something simple and familiar like failing relationships and casts them against the literally immense and horrifying mechanics of a vengeful universe. It’s fun. Or at least it should be fun. 

RF: Because underneath all of those more “mythic” details, the play really is about some deeply dysfunctional relationships. How do you want the audience so feel about relationships when they come away from the play? 

SY: Amused by the terrible choices? Although I’m betting some people will leave identifying with the terrible choices, which would also be pretty great. It’s essentially a dark comedy and only one character of the seven in the play is anywhere even close to being a “good” person. So it’s tricky. Maybe I’d like the audience to come away hoping these characters will become better people. I want to say it’s never too late for anyone, but the play doesn’t really make that case. 

RF: Why do you use so much overlapping speech in Mercury? 

SY: Oh, that’s something I use in all of my plays. In real life we don’t wait for other people to finish speaking, especially in heated exchanges. And it’s also a way of tuning rhythms and builds, like in a piece of music. 

RF: You write for several different forms of media, including for comics and TV -- how does that compare to playwriting? 

SY: Playwriting lets you be a little bit more ambitious with storytelling. I think that’s the best way to say it. In theatre we ask audiences to suspend their disbelief and imagine a lot more. That means we can take bigger swings.

RF: That's the beauty of it. Thanks again for your time!

The Rough Reading Series is Pay What You Can. The 2016 series continues with "Mercury" by Steve Yockey, playing Monday, March 14th, 7:30pm at Roble Hall, Stanford University and Tuesday, March 15th, 2pm at Custom Made Theatre, San Francisco.

Read more about "Mercury", Steve Yockey, and the Rough Reading Series at  Playwrightsfoundation.org. 

Save a Seat with an RSVP! Email rsvp@playwrightsfoundation.org or call 415.626.2176.

Interview with Phillip Howze, playwright of "abominable"

Welcome to the 37th Annual Bay Area Playwrights Festival! I'm Natasha, one of the interns at this year's festival, and I will be posting a series of interviews with the playwrights in the next few weeks leading up to the festival from our incredibly talented playwrights.

The plays have been chosen, the artistic team is being finalized, and everyone at Playwrights Foundation is working very hard to make this year's festival one of the best yet. Keep checking back with our blog to stay updated on backstage scoops and information on our engaging special events throughout the festival. 

I was fortunate to interview the brilliant Phillip Howze whose play abominable is really worth checking out. 

Phillip Howze

Natasha Brown: Thank you for letting me interview you. Let's kick things off! First question, is your style distinct or does it change depending on the play? 

Phillip Howze: With each play I’m becoming more aware of getting out of the way of the play and letting it be what it wants to be. The play is shapeless for a very long time. It takes a while to figure it out. Every play is different and it takes on the features and qualities that it intends itself to be.

NB: That makes sense. Are there any interesting stories about how this play came into being?

PH: I wrote the first draft of this play a couple of years ago, very quickly. It started as an exercise with a great professor of mine at Yale, Paula Vogel. She challenged us to write a play with a certain prompt and ingredients. Actually I’m not very good with authority so my first thought was “no!”, but eventually the idea became kind of freeing once I went with it. The draft changed dramatically over time. I’m really happy to work on it at the festival in its current state because I think that I’ve gotten to what is actually at the heart of this play.

NB: And we're happy to have you! Whilst reading your play, the hole reminded me of the digging of the hole in Suzan-Lori Park’s The America Play. I was excited to see the imagery again. The tone of this play, however, is different. What are you hoping to accomplish with the hole in your play?

PH: Of course Suzan-Lori is someone I love and admire. I think she describes that hole as a kind of metaphor for the history of America. Recently, in Florida all of these crazy sinkholes were opening up all over the place. My parents live there and I visit them and often think about that geological phenomenon. The hole in this play is likely more literal. But it is ambiguous whether the husband is digging himself into it or out of it. Of course anyone who sees it may project whatever they want onto it. I encourage that.

Suzan-Lori Parks

NB: You play around with the use of sound a lot in the play, whether it is through the blackout transitions or words being distorted in some way. The writing is also very lyrical. What do you want the audience to experience whilst watching your play in terms of the soundscapes?

PH: As a writer, I’m interested in the visual and aural landscape too. There is a lot in this play about listening versus hearing – the idea of something going in one ear and out the other. How does that information change on its route? How does your imagination change it? Everything goes through a filter and that filter is how we are interpreting or making meaning of the things we are engaging in. In part, I think the heightened speech and sound in the play reflects that disruption. 

NB: I agree. This play really highlights the economic strife of the family in very bleak and despairing ways. However, I’ve heard that you actually see the play more like a comedy. Could you tell me more about this?

PH: It’s strange because the story, though dark and eerie, is also incredibly funny. In life, we laugh to get through the hard moments. And I think that this family laughs a lot with each other, despite their circumstance. There might be a tragic framework, yes, but the characters don’t know that. They’re trying to have a good time together. For the spectator looking at it, it might seem abject but that’s only one half of the story. We can choose to laugh with them. In a lot of Shakespeare’s tragedies, there are flits of comedy throughout. A similar combination of light and dark are operating in this play. 

NB: Last question: whose work would you recommend for emerging writers to study?

PH: It’s important to read as much as you can. Read everything you can get your hands on. Never stop reading. Playwrights who have been meaningful to me over the years have been many, but especially the Classical writers. The Greeks. I love a lot of Shakespeare’s plays. But go to witness a lot of theatre too, because it will motivate the work that you’re making and it’s always been an important thing to me to be part of the community in that way. Get involved. Bear witness to things that are happening around you. And read the newspaper. Trying to stay informed about the world is a very important part of being a writer.

NB: Thanks, Phillip! 

The Bay Area Playwrights Festival gives voice to emerging and established playwrights who are pushing boundaries and have the potential to shape the future of American theater and culture. The festival runs from July 18-27. Click here for the calendar and special event details for the whole festival. abominable is showing on July 19th, 4pm and July 26th, 8pm. Get your tickets here!

Inside the Des Voix Mind: Michelle Haner on Léonore Confino and "One Upon Another"

For a translator, taking on the work of a contemporary playwright, especially one as playful and provocative as Léonore Confino, can be a bit like taking a trip down the rabbit-hole.  While hanging out the unknown found there, ideally, that time is spent not just obsessing over the "blades of grass" (the word-to-word stuff), but also discovering a greater landscape, one forged of rhythms, sounds, atmospheres, themes and of course characters. 

Michelle Haner, Translator

In the process of rendering Confino’s world from French to English, questions of translation range from the logistically banal (should I transpose euros, kilos and the names of products and supermarkets?) to the culturally subtle (how to translate that sense of lightness, irony, melancholy or “je ne sais quoi” embedded in a particular turn of phrase?)

In Confino’s portrait of a contemporary French family, three generations “one upon another”, alternately imploding and exploding, the voices of the characters are a particularly rich, vital part of her landscape. Voices come from beyond the grave; voices lose their bodies and resonate through the pre-fabricated house. Seeking to capture their distinct, vital qualities in translation has been both exciting – and particularly challenging.  There is the broken, breathless, sometimes frantic voice of the over-taxed mother; the loving, but ‘oft evasive voice of the scientist –husband; the ironic, bitter, profanity-laced voice of the wheel chair bound grandfather.  Most powerful, poignant and challenging are the voices of the children, smart, savvy, funny, self-aware and heart breaking in their brutality, their nihilism, their despair. Theirs is a language infiltrated with new tech-inspired inventions and pop cultural references, not to mention such French adolescent mainstays as Anglicism’s and “vers-langue” (a popular French slang created by saying words literally backwards).

Léonore Confino, Playwright

It is as much through the specificity of these voices – as through her unique mix of drama and slapstick, tragedy and comedy, real and surreal – that Confino probes the French family of today, offering up a portrait of a society in flux, in tension, in uncertainty and self-reflection. 

Having so enjoyed the opportunity to spend this time exploring Confino’s world, the translator’s humble hope is simply that she has been somewhat successful in rendering up an English-language version, that Confino’s vision may be shared with a wider audience.

-Michelle Haner, Translator of One Upon Another by Léonore Confino.




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Staged Readings of "Les uns sur les autres" or One Upon Another by Léonore Confino will be on Saturday, May 10 @ 2pm and Sunday, May 11 @ 7:30pm at the Tides Theatre, as a part of the Des Voix Festival. 

Des Voix...Biennial 2014: A Festival of New French Plays and Cinema features the American Premiere of Communiqué n˚10, three new French Plays in translation, five french film screenings and a Bal Littéraire, a New Play Night Club.  

Purchase a Full Festival Pass here and gain access to every reading, film, Bal Littéraire and your choice of Communique n˚10 performance during Des Voix!

Check out the Des Voix Festival website for more information, including links to buy tickets, a full festival schedule and directions on how to find where the Left Bank Meets the Left Coast.  

Go On Living: A Tale of an Accidental Activist

Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, playwright

written by Sophia Naylor, Production Fellow and Production Assistant for Go On Living

Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's powerful new work-in-progress Go On Living is centered around the life of poet Liao Yiwu. Yiwu spent four years in prison in China for his poem Massacre, which condemned his government's violent reaction to the Tiananmen Square protests. When the play begins, Yiwu (who is still living in exile in Berlin) isn't wrapped up in politics, but instead with living the way he wants to: whether that is to drink when he wants to drink, to make love to beautiful women, or to write a poem about a national tragedy. As we watch Yiwu's experience in prison, we witness his beautifully reconstructed relationships with his fellow inmates, adapted from his memoir For a Song and a Hundred Songs: A Poet's Journey Through A Chinese Prison. He's not a man intending to be inspirational; he simply can't help but inspire others.

Go On Living was part of the Rough Reading Series, a monthly program of new plays in development. Normally, plays receive 10 hours of rehearsal and then two readings back to back. This November, we were fortunate enough to work with the New Play Practicum at UC Berkeley, and through their support were able to have 20 hours of rehearsal and readings spaced a week apart. (Thank you guys!) This gave Frances more time for rewrites, which she took complete advantage of. Between our reading at Stanford and our reading at Berkeley, Frances completely transformed the play, which was exciting and frightening. But that's what we here at the Playwrights Foundation are all about: giving playwrights the space and support to wreck havoc on their work to create something completely different and new.

It wasn't only frightening for Frances--it was nerve-wracking for the actors too. They would come into each rehearsal and ask, "Who am I playing now?" (Usually we would know.) And bless their huge hearts, they were faster than lightning on their feet--flat out amazing. I loved watching director Mei Ann Teo constantly moving around, gesticulating passionately, even after her back went out. Because of the extra rehearsal time, this was certainly a reading where people weren't bounded by their physical scripts: actress El Beh played her cello while swinging it around the stage with the help of actor-script-holder Ogie Zulueta,* who later read while doing a handstand. Watching them take the text and move with it was something special, and something you don't get to see much in readings. That extra rehearsal time allowed Frances to see her work staged, which is just as important as hearing it at a reading. Following all that rehearsal came the performance, and then it was all over.

After the theatrical fanfare of a well-written show (or in this case, a first act--we're eagerly waiting for more, Frances!), you can go over all the details of the production, but the most important question is, did it move people? One of the most fulfilling moments of this entire experience was hearing a young Chinese woman talk about her experience watching the show. She had grown up in China, but she had never heard of Liao Yiwu, and had only a cursory knowledge of what had happened in Tiananmen Square. As she said, talking about those kinds of things in China was "forbidden." For Frances to be able to listen to reactions like that while still writing her piece must be invaluable for the development of her work. That is the crux of what a Rough Reading can offer a writer; and at the same time this same reading can educate and inspire an entire audience.

*A Member of Actors' Equity Association

Plays: A Place for Paths to Cross

Take a walk with Playwrights Foundation this Fall, as we journey to places near and far as we present to you our latest Rough Reading season. We first meet with Dipika Guha with her new play HERCULINE AND LOLA-  an epic love story of two people stranded in their own time, yet bound together by inexplicable force. 

I often find that my plays emerge from some small instinct I have that there might be connections between seemingly disparate things. Or, as my teacher Ken Prestininzi once more eloquently said, “plays are a place where things that don’t normally touch, touch’. The story of writing this play was, for me, one of learning to trust that that the connections between disparate elements exist, even when we can’t always see them. 

In 2008 I wrote a short play called Habeas Corpus. The play takes place in the crossing of two stories. One was about two inmates held at Guantanamo and the second was about a teenager who learns that they are intersex (or biologically both male and female). I was led to the material by the dim sensation that there might be some connection between torture, democracy and our impulse to rigidly categorise gender and sex. I thought the play would no longer be relevant after 2008 because Guantanamo would most certainly be closed by the end of the year.

Two years went by with the right to a fair trial or habeas corpus still suspended in the United States, Guantanamo still open and our thinking still as polarised.  So instead of thinking the play irrelevant I then tried to expand it!  But it wouldn’t! The harder I tried, the more mute the characters became, and my effort ground to a halt. At the end of that frustrating time, my mentor Paula Vogel and I had a conversation where she instructed me to her wife Anne Fausto Sterling’s pioneering work on intersexuality and her wonderful book Sexing the Body. Paula also told me to read the Diary of Herculine Barbin, a first person account of the short life of a French nineteenth century intersex school teacher. Herculine Barbin turned out to be the connective tissue I needed to expand the ideas if not the story of Habeas Corpus.

By that time my ambitions for myself and the play had altered. I wanted to work on this new play like a painter works on a canvas. I wanted to treat the progression of colour and space in the play with the same curiosity and interest as I would story and narrative. I was deeply interested in the use of painterly abstraction in, say someone like Van Gogh (who is very present in this play) who uses shards to build a realistic picture versus the effect of an overall abstraction through solid colour like Rothko (who is also present) to create landscapes. Eventually I discovered I could perhaps create both kinds of abstraction if I used a tripartite structure where each part of the play would use a different technique or style. So in Herculine [and Lola] we follow plot in the first part (Red) as it bounces around cinematically. We’re in stasis in the second part (White) which is for the most part a conversation between two people in a single location and finally we return to the plot in the final part (Blue) only time has passed and all the characters we return to are five years older.

With Herculine and Lola I’ve tried to write something I’ve been yearning to see on stage. Something that has the scope of a novel but is in essence theatrical. Something that would let me have my own “phase” guided by colours, because I so envy painters and their ability to submerge themselves in a single colour for years on end. And something that would speak to the fact that there is a whole spectrum that exists between black and white, male and female, past and present-a play that could hold all this and still tell a story. As I write this, I feel quite I’ve failed many of these ambitions. But it’s an experiment I believe in wholeheartedly, as I do in the necessity of creating new worlds to hold the voices of voices who do not always get a space to exist on the world stage in their own times and in ours.

Written by Dipika Guha, playwright

Join Playwrights Foundation and Theatre of Yugen for HERCULINE AND LOLA this Tuesday, October 15 at 7pm at NOH Space.

Rough Readings are PAY WHAT YOU CAN
Send us your RSVP and we'll save you a seat!

Making Theatre Matter: Talk and Action

Now there's one more reason to look forward to Friday. 

At 2pm tomorrow the BAPF is hosting an incredible panel of theater makers who use their art to engage the world's problems. The discussion, Making Theatre in a Messed Up World, takes its name from moderator Velina Brown's TBA blog post of the same name.

It's free! It's open to the public, and it will inspire you.
(If you're out of town, watch the livestream or the archive)

Who are we going to speak with?

• jump-up-and-down-and-march-with-me rabble rousers
• introspective writers who hit where it hurts
• activists in neighbourhoods, prisons and classrooms. 

Many are locals—all are nationally renowned. Names below! We're going to put it to them straight in this two part seminar

Part I: Why theatre?

When we decide to make a change, fight an injustice, why turn to the stage? What is it that the performing arts has that no other tool has? Why do we put on make-up and costumes instead of marching or going door-to-door? What makes the stage more powerful than the megaphone?

Part II: How?

These panelists are experts in all different styles. Their performances are devised, hip-hop, circus-inspired, musical, dramatic, and poetic. They use transcriptions and adaptations and (our favorite) brand-new writing. These panellists put the audience member in a different position, each dependent on the different style. Are you watching the story, waiting on edge to boo, hiss or cheer? Are you an active creator of the story? The means, as always, are just as important and varied as the ends.

Without further ado, let's meet our amazing guests.

Velina Brown (Symposium Leader)

Rhodessa Jones, Cultural Odyssey

Lindsay Krumbein (Gritty City Rep)

Margo Hall (Actress, Member Campo Santo)

Michael Rohd (Sojourn Theater)

Michael Gene Sullivan (SF Mime Troupe)

Dael Orlandersmith (Playwright - PF Workshop Instructor)

Richard Montoya (Culture Clash)

Torange Yeghiazarian (Golden Thread)

Ryan Nicole Austin (NuDekades and Mouthoff)

Sean San Jose (Actor, Director, Member Campo Santo)

Kinan Valdez (El Teatro Campesino)

Christine Young (USF Department of Theater and Social Justice)

Joan Holden (Playwright, Former SF Mime Troupe lead writer)

Kimber Lee (BAPF Playwright, author of brownsville song [b-side for tray])

Phew! So if you ever wanted to meet any of these fabulous movers and shakers, tomorrow is the time! It's going to be a open conversation, with panelists -  not lecturing -  but engaging with the audience in a seat-swapping, hard hitting, honest discussion. Everyone who wants to speak can speak and have their topics heard in an open forum. 

The event will be ABSOLUTELY FREE, followed by snacks from Mediterranean restaurant Pera and complimentary wine!

This symposium will be simultaneously live-streamed through #newplaytv. So catch the conversation there if you can't be with us on the day.  


So. That's the talk, but what about the walk? You'll really to see the political work we're fostering at the moment. Kimber Lee's brownsville song (b-side for tray) is playing at 8pm that night. This graceful, lyrical work. Unpretentious, funny, gentle, but with plenty of teeth, this play acts as a witness and not a commentator, challenging the definition of "political" theatre. It is a must-see event.

photo by Jim Norrena

So join us Friday for these two great events. Talk the talk and walk the walk, meet some collaborators, find some friends. Lets get angry then happy then moved by turns.
It's a great time to be alive and making art!

Setting the Stage for the Playwrights Festival

We are two weeks away and counting down to the arrival of our playwrights. They are preparing for 3 weeks of work with the 36^thAnnual Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and things are cooking in the offices as we get ready for them.

Most people will never know about all the hard and yet joyous work that goes into setting the scene for the festival, but let's take a look behind the veil here. Right now, we’re…

• Signing the leases on the playwrights’ gorgeous Victorian flat in the sunny Mission district of beautiful San Francisco...

• Finalizing details for their retreat at the Black Mountain Retreat Center in relaxing Cazadero, CA...

• Setting rehearsal schedules for all the plays at Thick House Theater and other local spaces...
  
  
  
  
  
•  Gathering nationally known artists, including:
  
  Richard Montoya (of Culture Clash) and Founding Artistic Director of Sojourn Theatre in Portland, Michael Rohd to fill our panels and lead other special events...

Richard Montoya

Michael Rohd

•  And FINALLY, mailing postcards and otherwise getting out the word as we prepare for ticket sales beginning . Go here to purchase!

Next week we reveal the faces of the office, and get an insider look into the lives and ambitions of Playwrights Foundations powerhouses, so keep checking back!