Interview with Deirdre O'Connor

New York City playwright Deirdre O'Connor is coming to the Bay Area this May to workshop her new play Assisted Living as part of our in the ROUGH series. PF Associate Artistic Director Jonathan Spector spoke with O'Connor about her career and Assisted Living.

Jonathan Spector: Your play Jailbait recently finished a run at the Cherry Lane in New York. The play was developed through the Cherry Lane Mentor Project and then went on to full production. What about that development model did you find useful as you were working on the play?

Deirdre O'Connor: The best part of the Mentor Project was getting to know my mentor, Michael Weller, who is an exceptionally talented writer, and a very generous person. Michael encouraged me to take great care with the revisions of Jailbait and to spend a lot of time listening to the play both in rehearsal with the actors and in the theatre with the audience. When we put up the workshop production of Jailbait last year, I was shocked by how much I learned about the play sitting in the back row of the theatre listening to the audience respond. I made the strongest revisions to the play after that workshop production, and as a result Jailbait was a much richer play going into the full production this year.

JS: You've been developing Assisted Living this year at the Lark's Playwrights Workshop, and it will have it's first public reading next on the in the ROUGH Series. What was your jumping off point for this play?

DO: Assisted Living is about Jimmy and Jane, a brother and sister whose relationship begins to unravel because of the difficulty of caring for their aging mother. I have always been fascinated by the relationship between adult siblings. I think that our roles within our families are defined at a pretty young age. We are told who is the smart one, the goody two shoes, the troublemaker, etc. And no matter how we may change as we grow older, we often see our siblings only in those childhood roles. With Assisted Living, I really wanted to explore two siblings who think they know each other, but are forced to look at each other anew.

JS: Whose work among your playwriting peers are you most excited about at the moment?

DO: After spending the past seven months in the Lark Playwrights Workshop and getting to know Lisa Kron, Sam Hunter and Thomas Bradshaw I would have to say that I’m currently most excited by their work. We all have very different approaches to playwriting, but I have found our differences to be both challenging and inspiring. It’s been amazing to encounter their unique voices and see their plays slowly come to life week by week.

JS: What's up next for you?

DO: Well, I still feel that I’m pretty early on in the process of developing Assisted Living. I’m really looking forward to hearing it in front of the audiences because I’m sure I’m going to discover a great deal about the play through that experience. And on top of that I’ve got my hands full writing about robots and aliens for the children’s television show, The Electric Company.

Interview with Thomas Bradshaw

New York City playwright Thomas Bradshaw is coming to the Bay Area this April to workshop his new play Job as part of our in the ROUGH series. He'll also be teaching a class, Provocative Playwriting in our New Play Institute. PF Associate Artistic Director Jonathan Spector spoke with Bradshaw about his career and his goals as a writer.

JONATHAN SPECTOR: You've garnered a reputation over the past few years as a "provocateur" playwright, with characters who behave in shocking, outrageous ways. For instance in PROPHET a character gets a message from God telling him to enslave women, and he attempts to follow through, or in PURITY, two professors travel to Ecuador and "rent" a 9 year-old girl. Yet no matter how terrible the actions of characters in your plays, you never seem to pass judgment on them. How do you approach creating characters with such extreme moral stances?

THOMAS BRADSHAW: First of all the issues that I'm dealing with are part of the landscape of our world. We had a president for eight years that claimed that god told him to do things, including going into Iraq, then on the flip side, we have people who want to blow up the western world in the name of god.

So yes, one might say that my characters behave in shocking, outrageous ways, but I would say that they're frighteningly real.The involuntary prostitution of young girls, teenagers, and women is our modern form of slavery. It wouldn't be a problem if there weren't a high demand for it. Look at the show “To Catch A Predator.” It shows men trying to have sex with young girls and boys by the drove — and the people who were caught engaging in this behavior were rabbis, policeman, priests, doctors, lawyers and teachers. My plays deal forthrightly with serious issues that many people don't care to face. I categorize my plays as hyperrealism. They are like reality on crack — reality with out the boring parts.

Most plays make characters fit neatly into clear moral categories. This is pure artifice. No person is pure good or evil. Everyone fits somewhere in between. To stuff a character into a clear moral category is to make that character inhuman. I try to show the human side of characters that people might rather call monsters.

JS: Do you have an ideal audience in mind for your work?

TB: I think everyone should see my plays.

JS: You studied playwriting with Mac Wellman at Brooklyn college and collaborated a number of times with Young Jean Lee. How have they've influenced your work?

TB: I think we all have a desire to push the boundaries of what theater is and what theater can do.

JS: What's up next for you?

TB: My play The Bereaved is opening in New York at The Wild Project in September. I'm currently working on a commission from The Goodman Theater.

Interview with Michael Gene Sullivan

We interviewed playwright/actor/director Michael Gene Sullivan, who will be teaching a class, "The Playwright as Juggler," with us this spring.

Jonathan Spector: You wear many different hats in the theater – as an actor, a playwright, a director and an artistic director. How do keep a balance between all these fields? Do you think of them as a separate endeavors or all a part of the same thing?

Michael Gene Sullivan: I've been very fortunate in having the chance to do all three! And ...how can I say this without sound hokey... they are all, basically the same thing - all aspects of trying to solve the problem of how to tell an important story to an audience. It's all a collaboration, and I've been lucky enough to see the collaboration from each side. I think every actor, writer, and director should do each of the other jobs at least once. Not only will it give them a better understanding of their co-creators, it will make their own work deeper.

Another good thing about acting, writing, and directing is I have alot to offer when it comes to employment, though the myopia of some theaters is startling. Despite great reviews for directing, and the success of my adaptation 1984 and my scripts for the Mime Troupe, most local theaters think of me only as an actor. I performed on tour at the Actor's Gang theater, and the L.A. time said wonderful things about my performance, but the Actor's Gang sees me only as a writer. It really confuses some people when they see you doing something else. But is is fun!


JS: You’ve been the Artistic Director and head writer for the San Francisco Mime Troupe for several years. How did you initially get involved with the Mime Troupe? How do you think the role of the mime troupe has changed since it’s founding, and where do you see it going in the future?

MGS: The Mime Troupe is a Collective. We don't have an Artistic Director. A lot of people make that mistake. At first I thought Arthur Holden was Artistic Director, then Joan Holden, then Dan Chumley. It wasn't until I worked with the Troupe that I understood the Collective Directorship. It's a particular model, and frequently people think whoever is the most prominent Trouper at any given moment is the Artistic Director. Right now I'm an actor, director, and resident playwright.


I first saw the Troupe as a teenager when my father brought me to a show. I was blown away. Music, comedy, and a radical call to arms. And it was free! What more could anyone ask?

When the Troupe started it was at the forefront of the Free Speech movement. People today don't understand how outrageous it was back in the Sixties to say things like "The War is wrong!" or question Capitalism as the system that can produce the greatest good for the greatest number. Odds were you'd get jailed, or beaten, or both. The Troupe made controversy entertaining and informative, revolutionary, and fun. There were still arrests, but as the public became more aware of the problems in our country that had been glossed over the message of the Troupe became less shocking and more an explanation to citizens hungry for information.

The Troupe's job is still to inform and entertain, to point out injustices, and to show the inequalities and cruelty inherent in a system that puts profit before people. And to make people laugh while they are watching it!

My hope with the Troupe has always been to create a world where a company like the MIme Troupe isn't needed. But the way things are going, that may be a while off.

JS: You wrote an adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 that was produced to great acclaim by the Actor’s Gang in LA and directed by Tim Robbins. You’re now working with Robbins on a film adaptation. What’s the process of working with a director to adapt a play of yours into a film?

MGS: Ahhhh.... 1984. Well, first of all the show is still touring! It just played Notre Dame, and there is interest in another international tour this Fall! That sucker has been running, off and on, since 2006.

As for the screenplay, I tried to write the play in such a way that it could work on stage or screen. I wanted it to be intimate, slightly claustrophobic, but with space to open out onto the big screen. When Tim told me he wanted to do a film adaptation I was worried he was going to push to make it all Hollywood - boobs, explosions, and car chases. Now, I like exploding car/boob chases as much as the next guy, but I didn't want them in the film. Well, over the course of a weekend he worked on the script without me, and gave me his adaptation of my play. I was shocked - it was almost exactly what I'd written! I think he added, like, one external shot. See, the concept is the play is the re-enactment of Winston's confession by four Party Members, so there was already space for flashback, voice over action, everything. So what could have been a painful, nasty fight between me and Tim - who is about a foot taller than me - was avoided!

The film project is still up in the air at this point. It's the only bad thing about Bush not being in office - everything feels less Orwellian. For now...

JS: What’s up next for you?

MGS: Well, I just finished directing a circus - what a dream come true! Right now I'm preparing for the Mime Troupe summer show. I'll be in it, and most likely write it - though I haven't decided yet. I also have another play I'm adapting from a novel written in the 20's about taking the country back from the speculating Capitalists as America headed into the Great Depression. Sound familiar? I also have a screenplay I was commissioned to write on the life of Duke Ellington. I've gotten some interest from L.A. and I just got back from laying groundwork for pitching the script to a studio. Then there's my adaptation of Christmas Carol...

Interview with Anne Galjour

PF Associate Artistic Director Jonathan Spector spoke to Anne Galjour about her work and her process. Anne is teaching a class with PF's Institute this spring. For more information, visit playwrightsfoundation.org


Jonathan Spector: You work as both a playwright and a writer/performer creating solo work.
Does your process as a writer differ widely when you work in different
forms?

Anne Galjour: Yes. Writing plays is a different cut of meat from writing solo work. I do not have the luxury of so many words in playwriting.

JS: Much of your work draw on your Cajun background. What continues to bring
you back to Louisiana as a source of inspiration?

AG: My family. My dad is a prolific storyteller. It’s how he makes sense of the world. I love the way Cajuns speak. My play OKRA is also running at the Bayou Playhouse right now.

JS: You've been on the playwriting faculty at SF State for many years. How
does your work as a teacher inform your work as an artist?

AG: I simply do my best to impart principles of dramatic writing and create a relaxed environment so that the poetry of the human voice with its needs, conflicts and stakes can emerge. My motto in class is ‘we fail forward’. This is how I feel about my own writing and performing practice.

JS: What's up next for you?

AG: My latest solo show YOU CAN’T GET THERE FROM HERE just had its world premiere at the Hopkins Center at Dartmouth College. We had a very successful New England tour of the show. It was developed at Z Space and directed by Jayne Wenger. Z Space is producing it here in September, 2009. I learned so much from working with Jayne. She and are cooking up a new work together.

Interview with Melissa James Gibson

Current Nobody Director Jonathan Spector speaks with Melissa about the play and her process. Just Theater presents the West Coast Premiere of Current Nobody November 14-December 13 at the Exit Theater.

Jonathan Spector: You have a very idiosyncratic way of writing dialogue, which seems to both mimicking the rhythms of actual human speech while creating a very specific kind of heightened language. Can you talk about how you evolve this style of writing?

Melissa James Gibson: It's really just an effort to capture the way I hear things, the way peoples' thought processes are reflected in the way they speak--all the self-edits, misfires, revisions and pauses that surround and inform, and sometimes form, human expression.

JS: In so many ways this piece appears at first glance to be an extremely loose adaptation, yet on the plot points and structure it’s actually very faithful to the original. How did the process of adaptation differ for you from writing an original work?

MJG: Well, it's both thrilling and daunting to be grappling with source material of genius. My hope was to honor that material by turning it on its head, while also retaining its heart. At the same time, I've dispensed with many elements that didn't feel germane to my particular take (and, of course, plays and epic poems are different beasts).

JS: Current Nobody is a project that had a somewhat lengthy development process. So much of the play deeply integrates the dialogue with the physical action and design in such a way that it’s all completely interdependent. How much of the physical action of a piece do you conceive in the writing, and how much do you typically develop while working on it with actors and a director?

MJG: The short answer to the two parts of the question is A, lots, and B, lots. I think about the architecture of my play worlds carefully, and in ambitious and sometimes unrealizable terms--the Brooklyn bridge is assembled before our eyes, for example--and then rely on the visions of talented designers and directors to imagine ways of elegantly executing these notions in three dimensions. The actors we work with in first productions play an important investigatory role, as well.

JS: What's up next for you?

MJG: I'm working on commissions for playwrights horizons and the Atlantic Theater company; a musical with composer Michael Friedman and director Mark Brokaw for Center Theatre group; and a film for a small independent company.

An Excerpt from Current Nobody

OD
Okay
This is good This is good I’m doing
good I feel good

(Tel makes a small cry. Od rocks the crib.)

Okay
She’s been gone

(Od look at his watch.)

six no seven and a half hours and it hasn’t felt like more than five and
I support her decision to do this
as I always support her decision to do this This
is the woman I married I feel good

My wife has
places to go people to shoot in thirty-five millimeter
wars to cover wars to capture and no one captures atrocity like Pen
Everyone says so everyone says
she’s got an eagle eye and a daring heart and My Wife
needs to see things first-hand God I miss her hand It’s okay It’s okay

because
She’s Never Not Come Back and
it’s just for one or two weeks
tops
This is good

(Od looks at his watch and then crosses over to the sleeping Tel.)

She
said the general said this was a
Besiege Becalm Begone type of thing and
she said the general said In And Out and
generals are generally right
Right


PEN
I mean I’m not one of those children
I mean I’m not one of those people who wanted to have children but didn’t want to have to raise them Well
I am a little bit like that I guess or I was until I met you
And you just fall in love you do
But you know when there’s so much you want to accomplish
(large exhale)
Parenting is a complicated mathematical equation
to which there is no known solution
It’s easy for us all to say we put our children first but a messy and contradictory business in practice or I mean
that’s what I’ve heard
Was it awful all the time

TEL
No no
not all the time
not at all
I mean
definitely dad was in despair a good bit
And I was in despair mostly too but
We did try to you know stagger our despair
unsuccessful though we were