Compelling Stories: Playwrights 2011 (Working In The Theatre #395)

so if theater is the fabulous invalid eternally aware of its mortality then today's guests are the antidote playwrights who tackle subjects and experiment with form in ways to keep the theater forever young hello i'm howard sherman executive director of the american theater wing and joining me today are christopher diaz stream kate fodor rajeev joseph young jean lee and terrell alvin mccraney welcome to you all i'm going to start with the shortest question i've ever asked why theater why theater well theater the theater for me is a little different i think uh then i think i came about it really differently and that and that i was in it my entire life i know a lot of people sort of uh got into it later but i i sort of have been in acting since i was about five and there was a point in theater that changed from being this thing that i did as a kid to it being an actual career option but less an option and more savior because if i hadn't done it i think god only knows where i'd be but it offered me a way to uh support myself and actually um express myself at the same time so that balance was needed for me and i and i found it when i was about 13 and i said and i really couldn't have resisted if i tried and i keep trying to i keep trying to find a way to resist like lots of stuff you can do well you would see that's the thing i wake up and think so and it just doesn't happen i go well you know i could be a lawyer and then i go and i'll walk into court and it'll look like this and i'll sit down and now i'm writing stage directions you see what i'm saying so it's not really law that i'm interested in i'm in a very sort of um kind of like marginalized area of theater which is more experimental theater i mean i'm not as marginalized as some experimental artist but um but uh it's it's this area where there actually is this ideal of total and complete artistic freedom and i write and direct and i have my own production company so when i do a show in this realm um i can literally do whatever i want within the bounds of like financial constraints and i've just started i've recently started i'm writing a screenplay for a paramount and it's my first sort of foray into the more commercial sector and it's just you know it's like the most extreme polar opposite and it just really makes me realize you know how um valuable a thing it is to be working um you know it's like we don't get a lot of fun you know like non-profit theater doesn't get a ton of funding like it's not considered super important culturally in the united states but it's um you know but it's this area where there are people you know like all of us who really still care about the theater and who want to support the artists and where it's not about you know making money or um or or you know becoming powerful you know because it's sort of outside of the game you know so so the fact that theater is kind of outside of the game at least the kind that i do um gives us this really sort of you know utopian artistic freedom why theater to me is basically live performance i'm really into live performance i love being knowing that the actors are in the space with the people that are are in the audience and uh that there has to be some kind of interaction and conversation and to me that's the only thing that we do better than film and television particularly television right now is really have a a relationship and a conversation with the folks who are in the room for me what kept me doing this is that i feel like if i write a play that let me into the rehearsal room you know it's the people really for me more than anywhere else i don't i've had a lot of lives i'm you know i think i'm probably older than most of the people on this panel i've been various different things in terms of my career and i've never found a community that i felt as happy in and so i feel like my my answer in some way there are lots of answers about what it is that you're making to the question why theater but i also feel like my my answer personally speaking is about getting to be in on the making of it and i don't know where else to find the kinds of people that i've met doing this and you know i just feel like i fall in love every two days you know so that's part of it for me in my experience it's uh the the collaboration in the room with actors and directors and designers um all working and hopefully in the service of of what you've written what and and and when it works out well you have people that are trying to honor your words on the page and your ideas and the the whatever in your imagination has come out and it seems to me that actors and designers and directors are taking that imaginative thing and and adding to it and making it more interesting and that experience is thrilling have you had the opportunity to work in other forms of writing kate i read that growing up you went every summer to a fiction writing camp oh i did and that was actually what you know i mean i came to playwriting really quite late i think um and what i was doing all through my 20s was working in an office and waiting to somehow magically write a novel without sitting down and typing anything you know and feeling sort of like i just know i have a novel in me and it will out somehow um and it never did um and then it sort of turned out for me i think that sort of where i felt my voice was in was in playwriting but i was also a journalist for a long time so it's been i i think that i i thought of myself as somebody who wanted to write in prose both both fiction and nonfiction and then somehow some way sort of by accident i wrote a play and that was when it all started to actually come out as opposed to stay locked in we'll try journalists too right no no but i was also i was a fiction writer or i was an aspiring fiction writer in college and thereafter and also came to playwriting kind of um you know in a strange and way it wasn't what i wanted to do initially well terrell you spoke of almost an epiphany at age 13 you'd always been interested in theater but but the writing epiphany was was that 13. well i was i was an actor i was a performer as you can tell by my gregarious nature you're getting laughs yeah well you know that's what i'm here for i i was in acting for a long time but when i was 13 i joined a program a rehabilitation program uh that was trying to get young people to um what's the word we we wanted to be prevention oriented we wanted to do shows that would stop uh or talk to young people about uh aids and uh hiv related complications but also educate them about and the awareness of drug use and drug abuse and so it was so i mean when you say it feels kind of like hokey you know you want these kids to get together and be like don't do drugs and so when we so we we did that but the the director a man named teo castillanos he asked us to write our own stories in the shows um we couldn't it wasn't we weren't allowed to sort of make up the sort of save by the bell no no shade to save by the bell to save by the bell version of it we had to like write what we knew and because we were all inner city kids because we all grew up in the projects because we all had some relationship to the growing pandemic that we now know as uh hiv and aids and also we all had influences and um with drugs and alcohol like in our homes and so these stories were really personal and we i just found that when at first writing i mean you were terrified you know the first time you put those things on on page you go no one's gonna understand this no one's gonna under know about what i'm talking about i'm gonna look stupid and i'm gonna have you know shamed my family but the first time i sort of really put something down that was from the heart and something that was uh almost a letter to my family there were these women who sort of came to me instantly and said you know no one's ever shown me what my addiction was doing to my children no one's ever talked to me in a way that spoke to me directly about um in art in the media about what was happening in my own family and my life and so that to me it just became that moment where i said before it became the balancing act where i was doing something i felt was very important but also could support myself doing it a lot of that was praying too i had to talk to god and be like look these artists don't really do well and i'm from the i'm from the projects i don't want to be back in there so you got to help me out so but i think but somehow there has been a sort of balancing and so that um you know that's why theater but that's why writing particular because i i still feel like we're missing um i'm a big fan of everybody here that's why i keep looking at them all like a greedy little monster because everybody i feel like i've read your work or seen your work and i feel like you're doing just that putting up stories um talking about things that we don't necessarily talk about every day and that that's important to me so i admire all of you i feel like that's that was a big that's been a big thing there's a moment when you decide to sort of like stop running away from the things that are that make you unique because people aren't going to understand them and instead just turn around and lean into it and completely like buy into it and um that was definitely i i come out of the i i was in graduate school at nyu at the same time that i was starting to do work with the hip-hop theater festival and that was like the biggest thing that i learned from the hip-hop theater festival was all this like you can make your own way of doing things you can make your own kind of work and those things that you think are going to be um off-putting or scary people they may be off-putting and scary but they're also going to be things that are really your story and so that kind of thing you're talking about where it's like i don't want to talk about this because maybe my family or my community is going to kind of react to it strangely the moment that you sort of become open and giving with that it seems like people sort of come around to it and there is this kind of like permanent state of embarrassment but that i think is sort of useful and i think we're all you know terrified by it and stressed out by it but drawn to it in some way that it is a life where sort of every minute if you wanted to you could turn around and look at yourself and say i can't believe i did that in front of all those people you know but it's something there's something that pulls you to that but there's a generosity in that and i think i mean one thing that i i mean i've learned a lot from working with very people who've been in the theater a really long time uh peter brooke one is one and it's about a spirit of generosity and that spirit of generosity does take that back and forth of embarrassment because it is sort of it comes from a place that we don't necessarily see in our everyday life it takes the sort of going deeper in to give that much and it seems like it doesn't at the time but you realize that you don't walking down the street every day i mean a woman held the door for me the other day and i was embarrassed because she was just so generous she ran in front of me and held the door and i was just shocked by it and that's the same embarrassment i think i feel in the theater all the time it's that digging in deep that makes you just feel like you kind of step back from it from a second are you always writing from inside yourselves and your own personal experience or at some point that's certainly what young authors always hear always want to write their own experience is there a point at which you start writing about the experience of others well i did a show two shows ago i i did a show that was a black identity show with a black cast and that was the first show where i really had no content to contribute and it was a really weird experience because i think my work generally is pretty personal um and i had sort of started taking on other identities with this um with this show called church that where all the characters were evangelical christians and they were doing a church service and i didn't want to just do this ironic thing where i was making fun of them i was trying to dig in and sort of get into the mentality you know so i started um and so and so then it continued with the shipment with this black cast and i remember it was just this really it was really awful because i would you know i'd write stuff i i write and direct at the same time so i'd write stuff bring it into the rehearsal the cast would say like we don't identify with any of the stuff you've written like you don't know what you're talking about and then you know and so then i just got them to tell me their stories and then i sort of started just writing um sort of for them you know the things that they wanted to say and it was a really it was really hard not being able to write from myself but at the same time it was really kind of great because i feel like after a while you know like my biggest fear as an artist i think a lot of artists fear is becoming stagnant you know like when you you know you get more successful and then you start churning out you know these sort of mcdonald's happy meals and it's like you know and like everybody is afraid of that and i feel like um you know that's that's it's just because you're kind of limited by you know having the life that you have and having the experiences you have and you know and you know it can be i think incredibly freeing to realize that you know if you're careful like you can go outside of that to me i don't know how i would do something that is if it's not directly about my experience isn't about my perception of what whatever i'm writing about you know there's something i'm coming to it from a position of emotion usually i think it was craig wright came to talk to um one of my classes one time said basically everything you write needs to be as urgent as a suicide note and i i think i hope that was correct right um my apologies if it wasn't but craig one of the dogs and and so to me that it's really it's about the first play that i ever wrote was was welcome to arroyos was about identity and gentrification in the lower east side where i had a grandmother who lived in the lower east side and i was an nyu student who was now gentrifying the lower east side and kicking people like my grandmother out of the lower east side um and so the play the hard part was i first tried to write it where it was like directly about me and that was a disaster and uh and then i tried for a little while to write it where it was just like something about gentrification in the lower east side and that was a complete disaster um and there was something about figuring out how to do this thing that was grappling with the ide grappling with the identity issues and the problems that i was trying to deal with and the emotions that were bubbling up for me but figuring out a way that it ultimately was a story about this person that was not me or these people that were not me but maybe all aspects of my personality so i think that's been the really interesting thing now trying to find experiences that aren't directly related to you but how do you find yourself in them and explore yourself and work something out no it's what's the it's those larger questions it's try it for me if i if i get into a play and i cannot identify the huge question that i'm asking myself and if i answer it then i stop writing the play like if i answered it for myself and i don't have any more questions about it or my perspective is sort of stuck i'm just like well that's not fun i mean i mean i wrote a play uh when my mother passed away about missing my mother and it was a dumb play i mean it's nice to write a play about missing your mom but you know you miss her so it's kind of dumb to write a play about it you know what i mean but it's the questions when uh it's those bigger things those questions when you just don't have the answer or you have five answers and you need to slide them in place to see how they they they act out or they work out those are the ones that are are interesting to me so they do come from me the questions always come from me but they are not necessarily um a finished product i always feel like if i walk out of a play and i have like oh yeah i got the answer to that then i'm like then i move on to what's for dinner then i move on to like you know where's that near a starbucks or you know that's a cute person walking down the street but i want to be wrestling with those questions when i walk out rather than sort of settled yeah and i think there's something in that about when it's for me at least when it works best i think is when it's my question but i found a story to explore it through that isn't my story which is sort of what i think you're saying too you know do you have lots of questions therefore lots of plays that you want to get to or is it sequential you are focused on what you're doing at that moment and then when that's finished you go to the next rajiv what's the case for you well i find that there's probably i have lots of different kind of not ideas but just like um just floating like seaweed and uh and it's and i i think i'm writing about one thing and then i just i'll remember something else that like that's also in my kind of you know orbit of of thought and i'm like well what if i just put that into this and they're too totally they don't have anything to do with each other and they're not related and i'm like well what if i did and then it's then the question is um not unlocking that you know th this this mystery but like how can i make these two mysteries fit together in an interesting and fun way um and sometimes that works and sometimes it does and sometimes i'm like well no that's not going to work at all and but i i really like to to think about you know oppositional things or not even oppositional but dissonant ideas that have no place with each other and see how in this in the span of my process i can i can introduce a way of connecting those things several of you have already made comments about writing and realizing it's not working or it's terrible or so on and is it truly when that happens is it your own realization simply that you look at what you've written and say no or is it once you begin to expose it to others or even go into production that you might realize that something's not what you thought you were doing nah me for me i'm a perfectionist so the minute i realize that it isn't working i'm i shoot it yeah shoot it i put it i put it to pasture and if it's something that i am passionate about even if at the end of the day it's not highly successful or even quote unquote commercial i will work on it until it gets to a point where i can show it and and feel proud that i did it but you know i there have been tons of things that just sort of go in that vaulted drawer that somebody will find after i'm dead and then become rich off of if it makes it to that stage where it it's being shown around and someone tells you that it's different or someone tells me that it's difficult i feel so much more passionate about what i was doing for i dig in and i'm ready to fight and i'm ready to say no this is why this works and um and maybe not have that fight but then maybe take sort of what they're saying and figure out what their um what they're actually saying they're giving me sort of like a symptom and i try to figure out what the diagnosis is and how to actually solve it yeah or how to take it but it feels like if it gets to that point and then it and then you encounter some kind of resistance like oh man no now we're finishing this one just to show this person that i know what i'm doing yeah i do think you know i just took what was actually my first ever playwriting class which was so much fun with um karen hartman and it was a three-week workshop and it was for people who either had drafts or clear ideas about what they wanted to be writing um and so we were working on stories as opposed to just doing exercises and and one of the things she said at the very beginning was you know look this is three weeks and i want you to just sort of like dance with the girl that brung ya you know and and not do the thing where every time you run into a difficulty in what you've come here to write you say oh you know what that was the wrong idea i see now that that was the wrong idea and i'm going to get started on this other thing and and that that three weeks was actually really helpful for me because i think there is a tendency to be fearful of failure or be a perfectionist and as soon as something reveals itself is imperfect for me at least to shoot it and i think to be to be forced to stick through the initial failures of what i was working on and and come out the other side of it was new for me but also really useful so i think there are both things well i want to know how you guys stand that part like that early part where you're writing bad things and you don't know what you're doing and like you're just producing things that are bad i mean i find that part so excruciatingly painful that i will do anything in my power to avoid right like it's because it's so painful just that first part and like once you start figuring things out then it starts getting good and you're on a roll and then it's fantastic but just that beginning part where everything is bad and you just keep killing things and then it just it's like awful like how do you deal with that part well i for me i get i would get really depressed seriously at our heads i'm glad you all do too because i thought it was just me and my poor boyfriend somewhere is just like he does he like really is wants to put me on xanax yeah it's just he just has no idea how to handle me during that that time because it is really depressing and it's really hard and i'm really hard on myself and i cry a lot and i roll around but you know i do i do i do tons of things but i but i think the other thing that i i've learned to do in that in that section is accept that i'm going to feel a bit of depression when i say depression i don't mean necessarily sadness but like a shutdown right because my body and my mind is trying to shut down to find a more key thought and then i also find that other art forms inform me i go what in music is like what i'm trying to get to what in dance is trying to get what i'm doing what what film is like so that so that some other genius somewhere can say oh actually i've done this already right and here's how i did it and make me and maybe clue me into where i need to you know the jumping off point but no it's it's i think it well for me it's that is a hard section and just every time is different too every baby has a different kick right um and so sometimes it's really bad um this new play i'm working on it's just it's killing me yeah is it just painful do you have that painful oh definitely absolutely but it's also like i what tyrell just said i is something i always have to remind myself of of going to seeking out other inspirations um which i every time i do it i'm like this is what i need to be doing all the time i need to be going to these exhibits i need to be seeing art that challenges me in a weird way and makes my imagination spin and i always forget to do that because one of the consequences of it is getting so far in your head that i don't go out you know and i'm and i sit at home and i stare at my own stupid writing because you have to punish yourself for being so bad exactly why do i get a night out no i haven't gotten my quota of pages exactly like i need to but it's i think it's a really refreshing kind of reminder um and i think to me the honestly the the the the most helpful thing i've found in recent years is having a group of friends uh to share writing with and setting up a date where we all kind of get together and read each other's work i do that actually with um people that mostly aren't theater writers i have friends from nyu where i taught that are poets and fiction writers and a playwright is as well but um and so we kind of having all that sort of different work and sharing it and having the deadline of getting together and talking about it um not only is it really helpful to have the deadline but it's also helpful to have that kind of sense of creative uh community and generosity it's another karen hartman thing i'm sort of karen hartman show today but um she also talks about something that had never occurred to me before which is writing in a room with people so i've over the years had various groups where we shared early drafts that we'd be embarrassed to show anybody else and all that sort of stuff but i've occasionally now started getting together with one or two or three people just to sit in the room and write and it takes i mean you couldn't do the whole process that way but little pieces of it it takes the edge off the panic for me you know even if everybody's just sort of silent in the room tapping away i'm glad you reminded me of that because she was my teacher back in school yeah oh that's right i knew that actually yeah and she she she used to talk about that all the time and also uh making little art collages for yourself which is amazing art collages dude we'd like we would you would take the characters that you're writing about and you like cut out what they you think they look like from magazines and then put little paper dolls of like clothes that they would wear so you like make this whole like my entire desk at yale had this big thing of like characters with different outfits on i i thought i was going into a fashion for a while it's just really wow it was just fun though because i would get up and i would see these people and go no not that hat yeah and it was and it was a different way of creating the world for me because i'm i'm visually stupid like i i don't have that i'm much more of an oral person i can hear people way before i can see them but this would just help me go oh yeah they look like that and they would wear this and they would walk like it was amazing and just getting to do something with your hands i mean really in this like second grade kind of way like to get to use a pair of scissors in the middle of all that yeah well that goes back to one of the things you said earlier about getting with people in the room i started i set out to write a farce and i've been trying to write it by myself sitting in a room and i couldn't do it and trying to write it sitting in a room and uh realizing that a big part of it is because you need to i can't just write the way i usually write where i just like this is the dialogue and now i'm going to learn what's happening i need to lay everything out i need to be really mathematic about it and so um it's a commission for the goodman with diatrovista who i'm in residence with in chicago and so we were able to do a workshop where we i came up with a bunch of scenarios and we were improvising and it was playing it was doing that with people and like so having the thing and i sort of sat and watched and threw a couple things back and forth but we were improvising a bunch of new things and it was it was great because it did two things it allowed me to visualize this thing that had to be really visual ultimately and it reminded me of like how fun it's going to be when we actually get to do this thing and the doors are slamming and we're moving back and forth and to remember that like it's also kind of that process of the early stage which is kind of a disaster can be really fun because when it's a disaster with real people running around it's super fun right so like is there a way that you can sort of internalize that and like take the mistakes that you make in the process and have that be a good time i don't know it's not working so far but in theory you know the the the up on his feet part is really going really well yeah there have been several mentions of teachers and classes i have a couple of questions but i'm going to ask for a show of hands kate just said it's like you're back in second grade so everybody raised their hands and the answer to this how many of you actually studied playwriting okay and how many of you have taught playwriting are there things that you were taught that you now want to pass on to others or is what you teach is what you teach your own way of going about the process both i think i mean i one of the things i learned from uh all the good teachers or the teachers that uh in my perspective were really good which are most of them actually uh all even my acting teachers they all taught me the same thing which is that i can't teach you talent i can't teach that to you i can't give you talent i can't i can't make you talented what i can do is point out some ways to get your talent outside of you that i have worked on and used but i can't there's nothing i can do for i can show you some craft i can show you some some skills a skill set some theory but there's no sort of teaching you talent um and that for me the reason i that was so important for me or important when i teach because i normally teach younger younger people very young people young people who uh never come to the theater never seen the theater you're talking about people the age you were when you really started my age but even younger sometimes people who go to the theater and see those cushy seats and go whoa how do i react to this environment and i and i nine times out of the ten i have to tell them the talent that is within you i have nothing to give you and no one can take that away from you and it's so important that they know that because you know you spend so much time going why am i talented and this teacher can help me and this person can make that you know that appear and it just it's a that's a waste of time that's an absolute waste of time there's so much other things uh so many other things you could be doing with that then investing in someone who's going to sort of wave a wand and make you talented or not it's just um it's for me that's it's so important for people to learn early because like that uniqueness that you're talking about it's so you that is the only new thing to the theater to the art that you can bring is you that's the only new thing we've got no news stories we've got no new real types or or tropes the only new thing is your perspective there'll never be another any of us sitting around this table so that is so important to instill into people very early on and to try to get them to bring that to the fore so that was taught to me and it's something that helps me so i hopefully try to pass that on in every way i think even just around this table you hear i mean we haven't been talking very long and if we if we wrote down all the names that have been mentioned of people who we attributed an idea to or who taught us something or i mean i think it does become kind of a crazy quilt of you know every little useful thing you can steal from anybody and you know and that becomes part of who you are as a writer and a teacher you know along with the talent um i think the passion thing is the thing you can't be taught and i think ultimately it's just like the plays that get you excited are the messy plays that are sort of all over the place potentially but are really just you just feel like it's ripped out of somebody's heart and i think that's an important simultaneous thing going on if you are in school particularly if you're in a graduate school program where a lot of times they're stripping you of what you know and putting something back into you which can be really great and exciting but to also remember the reasons why you got excited about doing this thing in the first place and to also understand not just what excites you about theater but what excites you about the world what you're passionate about in terms of like if you care about issues of social justice and and activism and those kinds of things this is you know my hip-hop theater festival world coming back to me again you have an obligation to to deal with that stuff not an obligation not just an obligation to like your audience and the world and whatever that is but like an obligation to yourself because otherwise you're going to be calling it some you know calling it something without within yourself well i didn't um i i didn't actually get that that classic playwriting training at all like i i did an mfa program with mac wellman at brooklyn college and his um it was like a very small program and he was it was very individualized for each of us and the main thing was that just he just made us write two plays a year which is like in a way the best play writing training you can you can get but um so so whenever i teach which is not a lot but when i do it's always i always teach self-promotion because i feel like self-promotion and being an artist are not two things that always go hand in hand and for the people who are natural self-promoters you know as i think i am like you just have this huge advantage like in a way you don't even have to be that talented you know like i mean there are i mean everybody knows like there are people out there who like their work is not that interesting but they're amazing self-promoters you know and so and so like that's the thing that i feel like you can't teach like you can't teach that you can teach and i always say to students like it's just another form of storytelling you know like i just have like i help them sort of craft a story about themselves and about their work that is as interesting as like a story they would tell in their in their plays and so that's that's usually what i focus on i'm curious because there have been comments about getting outside of yourself getting outside and away from your computer and looking at other things in the world thinking about how much do you draw as we spoke earlier just from yourselves do you draw from classical culture things you've studied or been taught and how much can you do you draw from popular culture are these all places that influence your work you did a play you did a version of lear but lear wasn't in it christopher you did a play largely centered around the world of professional wrestling um you combined life in the south with um african storytelling and and that style so so where do your styles get drawn from rajiv i've mentioned some of theirs so i'm going to ask you um i think for me pop culture is a is a huge part of um who i am as a as a writer and um i i am i kind of i've always you know i i tried to deny like the the things that inspired me as a kid and growing up which were you know basic hollywood fair and um comic books and um you know this and entertainment that you know i have uh as as i've been writing more recently and as i've grown up um i can wax poetic about forever you know i i i see moments from the indiana jones trilogy that i just get teary-eyed about and think that it informs my writing on a very deep level and uh and it's not because they do or don't but it's because i've assigned great meaning to certain moments of certain films and um and i watch them time and again and uh i love superhero movies and i i derive a lot of satisfaction from those films huh kate pop culture classical culture your own culture i don't you know it's a hard question for the answer i feel like it's all i'm not sure you know i can answer it negatively which is that i've always been completely and embarrassingly and nerdly pop culture illiterate so i was one of those kids who didn't have a tv when we were little and it would be time to play you know the brady bunch in the playground at school and the mom you know i knew there was a mom but i don't you know i i think but you know sort of by circumstance you know more than i don't you know not by i'm not anti-pop culture it just it doesn't i don't have a whole lot of knowledge of it and kind of what's been fun i mean this isn't about playwriting at all but kind of what's been fun as an adult is to get to go back and fill in those spaces that you know you know to watch the brady bunch for the first time at the age of 35 i mean i don't live anywhere so i don't have a tv so i don't necessarily have a tv anywhere but i have my computer and i've got itunes account so i download lots of tv shows and for instance uh uh friday night lights which is one of my favorite shows i love that show it's the aura style that's all that's all it is there's a wise sage somewhere there's a you know there there's a there's a there's an army there's a you know there's always this moment where the troops must be rallied there's a hero that emerges from the honest unexpected um there's an achilles somewhere who does something terribly wrong and there's a you know there's a hercules there's always some sort of reflection to me and sort of a greek uh greco-roman or even even more classical than that there's some uh ancient story some biblical tale that emerges every time i watch television or see a play and that that for me is the reason why we were talking earlier about um there are no news stories and that's it's exciting to me though it's exciting because i'm like yeah there are no new stories per se we're so they're somehow in the human condition repeating some things but then you get these slight new perspectives these new colors these new uh some things that just make um it just makes the world uh interesting to me to be out to be able to identify yeah that's really old but then to identify the new within that that small movement um forward it's really interesting to me so uh both and my libra sensibility christopher let me ask you about elaborate entrance of chad deity when somebody says oh it's a new play and of course they immediately reduce it to its most simplistic level and say it's about professional wrestling right in that case people might even have an initial resistance saying how can you write a play about professional wrestling it's a joke it's a good one thanks uh i didn't mean the play was a joke i meant professional wrestling yeah though yeah no thanks yeah the play we uh the best whenever we knew the play was going well um was when i would be sitting in rehearsal and i would go this is the dumbest play ever written and that was when everybody felt like we were doing something because we were taking this thing that people thought was really dumb and and again leaning into it leaning into the ridiculousness of it and finding something to say about culture or the world or whatever and sometimes just being being silly for the sake of being silly i mean you know the other thing we would always say is you know you don't have to be a fan of danish princes to appreciate hamlet you know and not to equate those things but it's really reductive to say this is a play about x and therefore i need to be a fan of x to like it rajiv wrote a play um since we're doing this thing uh wrote a play which is one of my favorite plays of the last few years which is called animals out of paper and is about origami sort of like it's the origami play you know i tell people about it all the time and i'm like he wrote this great play about origami in there like how do you write how do you make origami and it's super dramatic and it's super dramatic because it like goes into what the actual thing of origami is but also it's it's not really about that it's about these people who have found um something about themselves in and in some cases very particularly in the thing that they're doing so it's about people who care about something believe in something strive to do something better it's the exact same play as chad deity they're down to the cool um wise talking indian kid at the center of it uh but um so it's never it's never about the thing it's never i mean if you're writing a you know uh angels in america we studied angels in america and you know people would ask you what's angels in america about oh it's about reagan and it's about a's and it's about it's about a boy and a boy falling in love like with all this other stuff happening around it you know i mean when you get down to the basic of anything uh tony kushner we can only write relationships so like you're only writing about relationship on some level and everything else is is coloring that goes on top so young gene taking lear as a starting point what what were you going for in terms of taking a very well-known piece of literature and putting it through the prism of your own experience and imagination um you know well first of all i knew i was going to get in trouble you know because like shakespeare is shakespeare's sacred you know he's been much messed with yeah but people but people get mad right there's no rights it's uh you know but people you know people still get upset about it you know like if you don't there's like a certain degree of i mean i love shakespeare i studied shakespeare for 10 years i was almost a shakespeare scholar um but uh but but i dropped out um but um yeah no i completely love shakespeare but i mean the thing that i like the thing that confuses me about the perception of shakespeare in this country and that kind of reverence is i see shakespeare as being this crazy experimental playwright you know i think his work was insane like if you look at if you look at you know king lear compared to king lear was based on an anonymous play called king lear that is just like a totally tidy well-made play you know it's like witty it's charming it's like and nobody knows about it shakespeare yeah and then shakespeare like just exploded it and made it into this like sprawling sort of nonsensical crazy thing you know so i felt like you know when when i was kind of like you know exploding it and and uh you know and really sort of not um not being reverential towards it i felt like i was sort of honoring shakespeare in my own way like in my understanding of him you know but i felt like you know it was it's it's like people are very protective of him and so they feel like you know oh you're you're trying to desecrate him or like make fun of him or knock him off his pedestal and that absolutely was not what i was trying to do well some of that is needed some of it is needed for them to feel that way because they they've in order for people to relinquish this sort of right that they've got over uh things that are in the public domain uh they they've got to feel a little bit uh threatened that people are taking on and doing things with it that they didn't or shouldn't expect right and that that's needed because i feel i mean especially with shakespeare it's one of those things that every day i wake up and i think to myself now this beautiful language that is incredible is also paired down with some of some of the stupidest things in the world exit pursued by the by a bear to this day we're trying to figure out where it came from how it affects anything i mean scholars have written total books books and books and books about this one stage direction because nobody can figure it out and i bet you if shakespeare was around he'd be like oh i i cut that in the last draft and we and you know it'd be they forgot to take it out of the folio um and you go through these versions of uh reading these the the first draft the second folio the the quarto and you and you realize that there are tons of experiments i mean the first quarto of hamlet oh it's an action thriller but the worst lines ever ever to read to be or not to be in the first quarter it's not it's not a good time so it's like you know that that feeling of people trying to honor a specific thought that they have with with uh hamlet or or lear which is the longest piece of work in in the canon is is needed because they need to realize that that isn't the only version of it that there's many stories of it and that there's a lear in every country in cosmology around the world and that they don't all spring up with uh cordelias who who who get killed you know there's certain things that happen and change right and we have to and the more we are allowed to accept that the more we're allowed to add that to the palette the wider our scope gets about the human condition i think right right i believe you've all had the opportunity to have your work produced in other countries am i correct no i don't know if it's been produced in other languages or but it's been taken to other cultures do you believe your work is perceived differently when it's done in other countries than it's perceived here in america because as we talk about cultural reference points they don't necessarily we've learned even even kate doesn't have the cultural reference point of brady bunch um is your work perceived differently do you have a sense of that when it's done in other countries i think it is um and it also depends on the play um the play that chris was talking about or uh animals out of paper has been produced in romania and australia and in romania it was in romania and that was you know an interesting thing to watch it done in a different language um but that play i think there's with that particular play i think there's there's some universal kind of um ideas in the relationships between these people that that make i don't think there was that much of a difference in in in those countries i think it was kind of received the same way but i had a reading before it was produced of bengal tiger at the baghdad zoo in mexico city and it remains one of the more um fascinating experiences of my life because it was translated by a guy and then they they did a reading in mexico they don't ever do just a reading like they do a semi-production with props and with sound effects and with guns and paintballs and it was a wild experience but it was um it was a totally out there and kind of almost scarily wrong interpretation of that play particularly because this is an iraq play and it's about americans in baghdad and the a mexican sensibility with that issue is um incredibly different than our own and it and it created this um this amazing but also kind of like disturbing portrait of something that i i hadn't intended you know and uh that i it was it was a very useful you know experience and and the discussion that it um it generated afterwards was fact was fascinating to me um the the show about black identity i was talking about the shipment um we've toured it all over europe and the first stop we did in europe um the audience you know the first performance the audience loved it and um people came up to us after the show and they said oh like we're so we really enjoyed that play it really showed how stupid americans are with their race problems and we're so happy that we don't have race problems in europe like people act like lots of people said it like we don't have rice problems in europe it's not an issue here and we were like when they said that huh well we and so we we um uh so so we were really horrified and we were like well we can't you know we had all these tours lined up and we're like we can't tour through europe with this americans are stupid about race and thank god europeans don't have race problems show you know like and so we added i actually had to add this section to the play where the europeans in the audience got called out for whatever you know so what for whatever racial issues they had in that country and then that stopped but um but that really kind of freaked us out like the first time wow yeah no i mean my experiences are actually more varied in the states than they have elsewhere i mean brother size has pretty much been done everywhere in fact there'll be i think there might be one a maori version in new zealand i don't know we'll see but but i mean that the reaction to that play and the engagement has been pretty much the same save that here when when we do it in the south we get a reaction a little bit different than when we do it in the north and i mean the the most exp the most wild experience is when we did this play called the breach and um at southern rep in in new orleans and at the time it was very it's about hurricane katrina and it was right on the sort of second anniversary eve and it was just it was it it was amazing because when we when we did the reading on the second anniversary the play wasn't to go up for almost a year later and on the second anniversary people still were saying you can't do this play there's too much emotion behind it the city isn't ready to see it they were volatile they literally one person literally said if you do this play will burn the theater down and then the second and then it's like and i you can you can quote him and on the set when we actually did the play the it wasn't that the emotion was gone but they were in a place where they the dialogue was open and so the conversations that we were having were incredible and so i mean to vary from i mean the same city it's the same city the same theater the same uh patrons um to go from um it's just taking that american temperature for me was really interesting and to all and when the plays do that when the play sort of dip in and go and and dig into the heart of what's going on in the city or in a on a population it's always interesting to me not to play game show host but i want to read a quote that's from one of you i don't want you to suddenly leap up and say that's me um but i'd like you each to respond and obviously when we get to the person who who said the quote they can explain it further um but if they wish to but um i'm very curious because i find this i find this to be a very provocative statement um as american theater becomes increasingly conservative we are hastening our own demise is american theater becoming increasingly conservative and are you pessimistic about its future and i'm we're going to just go right in the rub wow i have to start yeah that's a that's an incredibly tough question um i mean i think it's a definitely provocative uh quotation i mean uh statement and uh i mean i'm gonna be totally honest and say that i just don't know um if that's if if i feel that way or not um i because i i mean and partly maybe it's because my my experience i don't have a depth of experience in in seeing theater and being attuned to american theater as a as an institution uh enough to to compare it to anything like what i know of american theater i know what i've seen in the last you know 10 years if not less than that and uh and so i don't have a sense of the direction it's actually going and you know maybe that's also because i'm not as a student a student of it as i should be but i think that um i see every i i i think it's rare to see a piece of theater that astounds me but i don't think that's i don't think that's anybody's fault i think that's the way it is i think that um when i see a play that changes my life i don't expect that to happen every day and i just i just feel like that's when that does happen i acknowledge it and i remember it and i and i value it but um i don't i don't have any sense of how one could increase that kate how do you respond you know i think they're they're they're two ways to interpret not so much a statement but the the question that you asked um you know which is one thinking about in terms of what's actually being produced where is the money being invested and then the other thinking of it in terms of what's being made what's being written you know is there a dearth of talent or material or and you know for me i've only really been doing this for i don't know five or six years or something and i still sort of feel like a kid in a candy store i mean i feel like being part of new dramatists and trying to read my way through that body of work and i mean i feel sort of constantly astounded so i feel like i have no fear about whether the work is out there whether the work is being done whether the people are out there um and then when it comes to the question of sort of you know what is lincoln center producing you know i i'm not i'm not an expert on commercial theater i don't i mean my my sense is that for me the more exciting stuff is happening lower down and that has with it all kinds of attendant problems like when you're not getting paid for your work really then you have to do other work and then you don't make as much work and i feel like we're losing a lot of work from some really great people because they can't support themselves and all of those things so you know i feel i feel both things i feel like at the upper echelons you know but then again those places are what they are they do a different thing they always will you know but but i i feel at least maybe partly because i'm new to it that i've just there's an abundance of riches actually christopher there's so much i mean we could we could do an hour on it i mean uh conservative is is is such a broad question um i do feel that in uh uh the regional theaters and and and not-for-profits that i've uh worked with or had connections with in conversations with um conversations are generally guided more and more by business decisions and less by artistic decisions which is understandable and fine and you have to keep the doors open and you're you're if you want to play that kind of game you have to play that kind of game i worry if those institutions are always making wise business decisions if you're making if you're sacrificing the art for the business make sure you're making a really good business decision there's probably 10 million other things that i that i will say the one other thing that i definitely want to say though is the i find more and more when i go to um festivals particularly development opportunities i'm seeing that groups and tables that i'm at look more like this than they have in the past which is really thrilling um diversity in in both in particularly in gender sexuality ethnicity race all that kind of stuff and so if that's conservative if that's not conservative i don't know but the big thing that i want to say is um i just encourage people to realize that diversity is not necessarily a risk which is sometimes it's perceived as taking a risk um but broadening the broadening the conversation is the thing that theater should in theory be doing i think a lot of theater's expected from a business perspective and from a social perspective and from all but particularly from a business perspective run the conversation because that's the way you're going to broaden the audience okay um well that was my quote and what i meant by what i meant by was basically what christopher is saying which is that you know it's like if if like american theater is going to thrive like you know we we need like more plays by players of color like women like it's still you know overwhelmingly you know like white men and the plays are artistically very conservative like the and um you know in terms of like the mainstream and it it it did um like that quote it was a couple years ago i think that i said that and it was it was sort of coming out of hearing a lot of artistic directors um of really major american organizations sort of complaining about the fact that like they want to do new work like you don't you know become an artistic director of a theater that's able you know like that's they want to be part of like this you know this new sort of burgeoning um you know they just want to be part of like what's what's happening now but their audiences are getting increasingly conservative and they need to keep their jobs you know so the quote was definitely not like a finger pointing it's somebody's i mean like the rest of the quote goes on to say like it's not about finger-pointing and blaming like everybody has to sort of work together to figure out you know how to you know how to keep us going but you know but i but i do feel like there has i feel like the country's getting more conservative and i you know i feel like audiences are getting more conservative and there's a lot of resistance to new work and you know it's like it's not like there's some big evil white man like controlling everything behind the scenes it's just like you know it's like what what do people want to see like what's the i think it's the economic crisis too i mean totally yeah i think that had a huge effect i know i know we're probably on time but the other thing i want to say is film and television particularly television are getting less conservative in their storytelling techniques and people who are people who should be our audiences are getting really sophisticated in terms of how to tell stories we need to catch up yeah that's that was also part of it tyrell you're nodding is there anything you'd like to add even though now you know who you're responsible no i mean i think i think everyone said pretty much the same thing the the the part about the audience to me has always been the most important it's how to how in which to get an audience that has never been in the theater before who does get free television which is very getting more sophisticated very lovely very uh rich art to come and sit down in the theater and be depressed for two and a half hours sometimes and pay a ticket price that could be from upwards of 65 that problem that is a business model problem and we've got to solve that somehow so until we do that we we may be hastening our own demise i thank you all for your plays i thank you all for a great conversation and for being with us today and thank you for joining us these programs are brought to you from the graduate center of the city university of new york in partnership with our friends at cuny tv on behalf of the american theater wing i'm howard sherman and thanks for joining us for another edition of working in the theater i'm ted chapin chairman of the american theater wing the wing has played a vital role in new york's theatrical life for more than 60 years best known for creating the tony awards we stand for excellence but we also support education in the theater and our work reaches beyond broadway in new york the working in the theater television programs which are supported by the annenberg foundation and the dorothy strelson foundation are unequaled forums for discussions with today's most creative artists downstage center's in-depth radio interviews were created in conjunction with xm satellite radio and can be heard on our website for people who are starting their careers we have a two-week boot camp for aspiring actors from colleges across the country called springboard nyc and our theater intern group provides a forum for young people who are starting their careers to build a professional network all of the american theater wing's educational and media programs are available for free on demand from our website americantheatrewing.org thanks for your interest in the wing and thanks for watching you

Channel: American Theatre Wing

Views: 7,831

Rating: 4.8644066 out of 5

Keywords: Kristoffer Diaz, Kate Fodor, Rajiv Joseph, Young Jean Lee, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Theatre, theater, playwright, playwriting, Broadway, interview, Musical, off-Broadway, Playwright (Profession)

Id: OKoTu9mYI9s

Length: 59min 0sec (3540 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 16 2012