Category Archives: Playwright

Interview with Playwright Diane Grant

Interview, LAFPI, Playwright,

Diane Grant takes the stand:

         I think we are all born to tell stories and to listen to them.  Leslie Marmon Silko says “I will tell you something about stories. They aren’t just entertainment. They are all we have to fight off illness and death. You don’t have anything if you don’t have stories.”

LA FPI Blogger Diane Grant, has been blogging since 2010 – the beginning. Diane’s thorough research of subject matter makes her work not only entertaining but educational as well.

1.  How did you become a playwright? 

As I child, I learned to love stories.  My father was a wonderful storyteller who could take the ordinary events of family and of daily life and spin them into something that always made us laugh.  My Aunt, my dad’s sister, also told stories.  She was the National Secretary of the Women’s Temperance Union in Canada and would travel from town to town with her felt board, speaking and reciting.  I was very impressed.

When I was in middle school and I can still remember being mesmerized by hearing a performance of The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes.  Our school auditorium was full of rowdy students when suddenly a man dressed all in black appeared on the stage and began….

“The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.

 The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas….”

It’s hard to imagine now but that auditorium was utterly quiet until he came to the end.  I thought, “Oh, I want to write something like that.”

I’m a Canadian from Vancouver, British Columbia, and my desire to write was reinforced every time my mother, grandmother and I would go to Theatre Under the Stars, an outdoor musical theatre in Vancouver’s gorgeous Stanley Park, where the singers had to compete with the seals barking and the peacocks screeching.  Magic!

2.   What is your favorite play of yours?

I just did a performance of my one act comedy, Rondo a la Condo, with The Kentwood Players, which remains my favorite play.  I don’t know why, except that I’m crazy about the characters, who are all trying to find a little peace and quiet but who keep each other on high alert much of the time.

3.   I loved a production of another short play of mine, called Sex and Violence.  It’s a difficult play to do because the comedy is dark.  The protagonist has grown slightly mad and his wife, who despises him, has to be played as a cold, ambitious woman, indifferent to his pain.  This production captured all of that and got all the laughs that were there, too.

4.   What play by someone else has moved you the most and why?

One of the plays that most moved me was The Glass Menagerie, which I grew to know well because I played Amanda Wingfield in two different productions.   I hate productions of it in which Amanda is played as a self centered shrew.  Her story is so contemporary.  She’s a single mother, abandoned by her children’s father. She makes terrible mistakes but she loves her children and tries to keep everything afloat in a time of depression.   Her son also deserts her and his sister, and his guilt is at the heart of the play.   And the language is superb.

5.   Who is your favorite playwright?  Why?

I have a few favorites.   Right up there is Shakespeare with his wit and insight and gorgeous language.  It’s amazing that so many of his words and thoughts are still part of our lives.  I wonder how many books there are with titles taken from his plays. Tom Stoppard’s sophistication and crisp language is thrilling.  (I keep looking for revivals of Arcadia.  Saw a very moving production at Vox Humana a few years ago.) Ann Jellicoe was an early influence.  I admire her immediacy, sense of place and culture, her zest for life.   She also plays with style and is not afraid to work outside a conventional framework.  Shelley or The Idealist is one of my favorite plays.

6.   How has your writing changed over the years?

I’ve learned to cut, cut, cut.  I still overwrite and am fortunate to have a husband who is a fine editor and who spots every comment on a situation, every repetition.  I’ve also learned to enjoy rewriting.  And rewriting.

7.   What type of plays do you write?

Although I’ve written plays with political themes and dramas, generally speaking I write comedies.   I like to call them “profound comedies.”  And I don’t know if I’m joking about that.  I don’t start out to write in any style.  Comedies are just what happens.  I often use music, too, and like the way it enlivens the proceedings.

What also influenced my style was working in a company that built new plays from research, documentary material, and improvisation.  We’d write as we sat on the stage, put the pages on their feet and go.

8.   Do you write in any other literary forms? 

I write poetry on occasion.  I’ve used poems in my plays but have usually turned them into songs.  My husband and I used to write screenplays, which involved a lot of walking around the block.

9.   Why did you become a blogger for the lafpi?

The fab trio, Jennie Webb, Ella Martin, and Laura Shamas asked me to become part of the lafpi and I was absolutely delighted. Women are still not adequately presented and represented in the theatre and we need to raise our voices.  I don’t know if I volunteered or was drafted to blog.

10.  What is your favorite blog posting?

Catching Up, which is about my fellow bloggers.  The bloggers’ voices are so diverse and wide ranging. I like getting to know their different worlds and approaches to writing and life.

11.  Who do consider an influence where your writing is concerned?  And why?

My first mentor, George Luscombe, the Artistic Director of Toronto Workshop Productions, encouraged me to write.

12.  When did you find your voice as a writer?  Are you still searching for it?

I think I found it early on but couldn’t describe it.  I’ve been criticized for being too implicit but I like nuance, subtext, and irony, and have been writing like that for a long time.

13.  Do you have a writing regimen?  Can you discuss your process?

I used to write every day and kept a daily journal but have found that the business of marketing has intruded something fierce and I write more sporadically.  I just read a quote from Bertolt Brecht that says, “It’s not the play but the performance that is the real purpose of all one’s efforts,” but he doesn’t say tell you how you get to the latter.

14.  How do you decide what to write?

I don’t think about it consciously.  When I have made a conscious decision, it has often been the wrong one.  I tried for over a year to write about the friendship between Paul Robeson and Albert Einstein before I realized that I’d never be able to make it work.

15.  How important is craft to you?

It’s key for me.  Searching for conflict, clarity, a character to root for, a beginning, middle, and end are what I look for when I rewrite.

16.  What other areas of the theater do you participate in?

I’m an actress.  At one of the lafpi  meetings at Theatricum, I got to stand on the Theatricum stage and thought I’d die from joy.

17.  How do you feel about the theater community in Los Angeles?

I’ve seen some great plays and some rotten ones but there is always something going on that’s interesting.  The Black Dahlia’s production of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot was out of this world and I still think of a number of plays I saw at the Odyssey, Tracers, to name one, with real pleasure.

18.  How do you battle the negative voice?

The negative voice is my default position, so I deep breathe and walk a lot.  It’s thematic in my life, walking.

19.  Do you have a theme that you come back to a lot in your work?

I realized recently that I write a lot about betrayal and abandonment.  But I also write about love, and betrayal and abandonment are part of that.

20.  I have three rewrites that I’d like to settle down and work on.  When those are finished, I hope that an idea will immediately attack and start the words flowing again.

For all blog articles by Diane Grant, you can go to https://lafpi.com/author/dianegrant/.  Diane’s first blog is titled “Gender Neutral” dated May 10, 2010.

Diane’s Bio

Diane Grant is an award winning playwright and screenwriter, whose film Too Much Oregano won the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize.

She was a co-founder of Redlight Theatre, the first professional women’s theatre in Canada.  Her plays, which have been produced and published in the US and Canada, include Nellie! How The Women Won The Vote, Sunday Dinner, Sex and Violence, The Piaggi Suite, Four Women In Search Of A Character, Rondo a la Condo, A Dog’s Life; and The Last Of The Daytons, a semi-finalist for the 2007 National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center.

Will To Win, a documentary on the Southern California Shakespeare Festival, written by Ms. Grant, and produced by filmmaker Kerry Feltham, previewed in Los Angeles and the Folger Shakespeare Library in 2007 and is recommended by the Royal Shakespeare Company of London.

Ms. Grant has performed at the Stratford Festival and the National Arts Centre of Canada.  She was Literary Manager of the Los Angeles Write Act Repertory Company, a mentor for the young playwrights’ group HOLA, and a member of  Los Angeles’ Wordsmiths.  She’s a member of the Dramatists Guild, The Playwrights Guild of Canada, the International Center for Women Playwrights, and is Vice-Chair of the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights.

Diane acts as LA FPI Task Force Coordinator.

Interview with Playwright Kitty Felde

Interview, LAFPI, Playwright,

Kitty Felde sequestered:

Kitty Felde
LA FPI Blogger Kitty Felde joined the blog team in 2010 during our first year. A generous artist who shares her many talents on and off the page, Kitty’s is a voice to hear; she’s fearless.

1. How did you become a playwright? What brought you to theater?  I’d always loved to perform. In fact, I was an actor for about ten years – mostly commercials, but also a Woody Allen film (Radio Days), an equity show at SCR, and tons of commercials (including Skippy Peanut Butter with Annette Funicello).

I’d written a revision of a Jean Claude Van Itallie one-act in college, but that was about it, as far as playwriting. Until I had a day job that bored me out of my mind. I had a quiet office and a keyboard at my disposal. I wrote my first play – a melodrama called “Shanghai Heart” that the LA Times favorably reviewed. I haven’t stopped writing plays.

2. What is your favorite play of yours? Why?  My NEW favorite is an unproduced piece for young adults that no one may ever produce since it has a character in blackface. It’s “The Luckiest Girl” – the story of a ten year old African-American girl who moves to Holland with her grandmother, a lawyer at the war crimes trials. Tahira’s homesick and latches on to the Dutch holiday tradition of Sinterklaas – and his politically incorrect sidekick Zwarte Piet, or Black Pete. Her grandmother – as you can imagine – is horrified.

3. What is your favorite production of one of your plays? Why?  I think the premiere of “A Patch of Earth”, my Bosnian war crimes courtroom drama. The Alleyway Theatre in Buffalo flew me upstate in glorious fall, put on a terrific production, even gave me the Maxim Mazumdar Award. The play’s been produced worldwide since then, but I remember that production best.
I also loved “Gogol Project” – a truly collaborative adaptation brought to life by the talented Rogue Artists Ensemble. They make magic on stage with puppets and masks. I think I wrote 14 drafts for them.

4. What play by someone else has moved you the most and why?  I saw Bill Cain’s “How to Write a New Book for the Bible” at South Coast Rep a few months ago and wept buckets and buckets. It isn’t a perfect play – certainly needs a trim – but I connected on a personal level, having lost my own mother several years ago.

5. Who is your favorite playwright? Why?  These days, it’s Enda Walsh, Bill Cain, and Ellen Struve.

6. How has your writing changed over the years?  I think I’ve gotten braver, more personal in my writing. Being glib is easy for me. It’s digging deep that’s tough.

7. What type of plays do you write? (Dramas, Comedies, Plays with Music, Musicals, Experimental, Avant-garde …) What draws you to it?  I’ve written a musical comedy, a melodrama, a radio play, a courtroom drama, a one woman show, a play for young adults, ten minute pieces, you name it! It’s the story and characters that draw me in.

8. Do you write any other literary forms? How does this affect/enhance your playwriting?  I’m a public radio journalist by day. Sometimes, the stories I cover inspire a theatrical piece. More often, it wears me out so the last thing I want to do when I get home is sit down at the keyboard again.

9. Why did you become a blogger for LA FPI?  I support the work of LAFPI! Particularly when you can count on one hand the number of productions a theatre has produced by women playwrights. It’s a wonderfully supportive group! And as an ex-patriot Angeleno, it keeps me in touch with my LA community.

10. What is your favorite blog posting?  The one about how to best use feedback from a staged reading.

11. Who do you consider an influence where your writing is concerned? And, why?  My mother, a teacher, who encouraged and nagged me and offered to loan me the $2 thousand that I spent on my very first computer if I ever needed it. My high school English teacher for four years, Sister Judith Royer, who now heads the theatre department at Loyola Marymount University. And Jean Giraudoux, the French playwright, who saw magic in everyday life and dared to write about it on stage. I was in 3 of his plays in high school, wrote a paper about him for English class, then acted in another of his plays in college, directed by the professor – Robert Cohen – who wrote the book on Giraudoux!

12. When did you find your voice as a writer? Are you still searching for it?  I’ve always written like I talk. And when I go back and blush as I read romantic short stories from my early school days, I can still hear that same voice.

13. Do you have a writing regiment? Can you discuss your process?  This is the hardest thing for me: finding a structure to write. My day job consumes me. Theoretically, because I’m on the east coast, I have an extra three hours in the morning before the folks in the Pasadena office are aware of me. That’s when I SHOULD be writing. But the reality is, I need tea – lots of it. And I drink it while reading the paper and tweeting and clearing the emails. Then it’s a mad dash to cover stories.

So, I’ve decided the best time for me to call my own is at dusk. My brain is clear (hopefully) of the debri of the day. I can escape to a desk down the hall – or to the stairwell steps around the corner – and breathe. And think. And write. I usually start with a freewrite – not the three pages advised by “The Artist’s Way” – but as much as I need to slough off the issues of the day to clear space in my head. I’ll return to it when I’m stuck, just to brainstorm with myself, trying out ideas. I’ve also created a new file for myself while I write: leftovers. This is where I’ll put lines of dialogue – or entire scenes – cut from my play. It’s somehow comforting to know it isn’t lost forever, that I can go back and retrieve it if I need it. Sometimes I do. But usually I don’t. (Maybe someday I’ll write a play just with these leftovers!)

When I have a draft I can stand to hear out loud, I like to schedule an informal reading. It’s usually in my living room with lots of wine for me and the actors. A more formal reading by a company or a festival is the next step, with lots of rewriting in between. Then, if the stars are in order, a full production.

14. How do you decide what to write?  It’s either a story that won’t leave me alone (like the war crimes play “A Patch of Earth”) or something that’s been bugging me (like “Clybourne Park” which I thought got desegregation all wrong and it led to my ten minute play “The Flier”) or characters that I’d like to spend some time with (my current project, a romantic comedy set on Capitol Hill).

15. How important is craft to you?  Very. I try to learn from other writers – how did they do that? Why does that work? What doesn’t? I find writers groups enormously helpful – hearing other plays in progress, figuring out how to make them sing.

16. What other areas of theater do you participant in? I’m a Helen Hayes judge here in DC. That’s the local version of the Tonys. I see about 3-4 plays a month. And I think if I left my day job, I’d work in a costume shop. I LOVE to sew and create clothing!

17. How do you feel about the theater community in Los Angeles? It’s interesting to contrast with DC: both are STRONG communities. Both have larger theatres that snub local playwrights. Both have a strong group of smaller theatres reaching out to local talent. I miss my LA writing group at Ensemble Studio Theatre. And I miss ALAP (Association of LA Playwrights). And there’s no LAFPI in DC!

18. How do you battle the negative voice? (insecurity, second guessing)  I have a weekly Skype appointment with a wonderful Omaha playwright I met a few years ago at the Great Plains Theatre Conference. Ellen Struve and I spend an hour every Wednesday night, sharing pages, talking about plays we’ve seen or read, and sharing the insecurities we all feel as writers. She gives me courage to face blank pages for another week.

19. Do you have a theme that you come back to a lot in your work?  Justice. And that nagging question of why neighbor turns against neighbor, almost overnight.

20. What are you working on now?  It’s a five person comedy set on Capitol Hill – a modern version of “Pride and Prejudice” called “Statuary Hall.”

For all blog articles written by Kitty Felde you can go to https://lafpi.com/author/kfelde .  Kitty’s first blog article is titled “Act Two Hell” dated November 1, 2010.

Kitty’s Bio

By day, she’s a public radio reporter covering Capitol Hill.  But in her real life, Kitty Felde is an award-winning playwright.

Felde’s written everything from a courtroom drama about the Bosnian war (A PATCH OF EARTH, winner of the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Competition) to a one woman show about Alice Roosevelt Longworth (ALICE, winner of the Open Book/Fireside Theatre Playwriting Competition) to an adaptation of a trio of short stories by Nikolai Gogol (GOGOL PROJECT, winner of the 2009 LA Drama Critics Circle Award.)

Her one-act TOP OF THE HOUR has been chosen for the Provincetown Theater’s Fall Festival for a reading and will premiere in New York City in December.

She’s a co-founder of Theatre of Note, a Helen Hayes judge in Washington, DC, and a proud member of the Dramatists Guild, ALAP, and FPI.

Interview with Playwright Tiffany Antone

Interview, LAFPI, Playwright,

Tiffany Antone evades questioning:

Tiffany Antone
LA FPI Blogger Tiffany Antone is one of the six bloggers to kick off the LA FPI Blog back in 2010. Direct, bold and innovative, Tiffany not only creates with words on the page; she creates venues for art to happen.

1.  How did you become a playwright?  What brought you to theater?    I grew up an actress – I was always auditioning, performing, and staying in the theatre till the last possible second.  I moved to LA in 1998 to attend the American Academy of Dramatic Arts… but I wasn’t the most amazing actress ever, and I hated auditioning.  I decided to apply to UCLA in pursuit of my Bachelor’s Degree.  I took a playwriting class in my first year and fell in LOVE.  I had always written, but this was the first time I had written a play – it felt like exactly what I should be doing.

2.  What is your favorite play of yours?  Why?  My favorite self-penned play is Ana and the Closet.  The play is incredibly fantastical and (I think) poetic.  I’ve been fortunate enough to see several readings of the play (including an AMAZING reading at the Kennedy Center), but it hasn’t yet been produced.  I think it’s to do with the fact that there are a number of “theatrical” moments in the play requesting multimedia projections, flying people, and a black river that writhes on stage beneath a crumbling ledge… (I know, I know… I’m not asking for much, am I?)  But even though it’s a wild show, it has it’s heart a very moving story about traversing the abyss of deep loss. I look forward to the day a director envisions bringing these moments to life with Bunraku artists in charge of the magic… Theatre is nothing if not inventive.

4.  What play by someone else has moved you the most and why?  Argh!  I hate these types of questions because they limit the field so narrowly… Okay, I’l pick three – how about that?  Three of my favorite plays are: Sarah Ruhl’s Euridice (HOLY COW – the lyrical nature of the script and the you-would-think-impossibly-contradictory-succinctness, the fantastic staging… oh, I was in love with the first read!), Anything by Albee or O’Neill (the men are story genies!), and I’m going to list two final plays in tandem because I LOVE how they are – in principle – both family dramas, and yet each ignite into something much more perverse, combustible, and ultimately delightful on stage:  August Osage County by  Tracy Letts, and The Pain and the Itch by Bruce Norris.

Yeah, yeah… I know – that was way more than three (sigh) but I tried!

5.  Who is your favorite playwright?  Why?  Can’t pick just one… just can’t!  But top honors on my bookshelf go to Martin McDonough, Sarah Ruhl, David Lindsay-Abaire, Suzan Lori Parks, and of course the great Albee, Shephard, O’Neill & Williams.

7.  What type of plays do you write?  (Dramas, Comedies, Plays with Music, Musicals, Experimental, Avant-garde …)  What draws you to it?  This is always a hard question for me to answer, because I don’t just work in one medium or style.  I have written fantastical plays, “sci-fi” plays, and kitchen-sink dramas, and – I’m currently working on my first absurdist piece. The thing that draws me to write is the world, and the “how” of its writing is dependent on the story I’m trying to tell.  My only “rule” when it comes to drafting a script is does it pass the “Who gives a shit?” test.  If I have an idea and I ask myself (honestly) “Who is going to give a shit about this play/screenplay?” and the answer is “Probably nobody” then I don’t waste my time developing it – I just scribble the idea down in my little notebook and turn the page.  That way, I’m not cluttering my calendar with brutal work on material that would probably be better off written as a poem that will sit in the back of my desk drawer – because if I’m the only audience for something, it’s probably not going to be a very good play.  If I feel an audience exists for the story in my head/heart, then I set to figuring out it’s mood, style, and shape and start writing.

8.  Do you write any other literary forms?  How does this affect/enhance your playwriting?  I am also a screenwriter, which terrified me when I first sat to developing the skill-set for it.  I think working in both mediums makes me a better assessor of story, and enables me to create/inhabit very different worlds. And if I ever sell a screenplay, I’ll be a much happier playwright 🙂

9.  Why did you become a blogger for LA FPI?  I jumped on board because there are so many layers to gender parity in theater – why not start delving into/and/writing about them?  I love the sense of togetherness LAFPI supports! 

13. Do you have a writing regiment?  Can you discuss your process?   Snacks.  I have to have snacks in every nook of my desk.  I also have to be careful with my “other” life, meaning Tiffany Who Pays the Bills must not work so much that Tiffany Who Writes gets buried in exhaustion.

16. What other areas of theater do you participant in?   I find myself doing a lot of producing lately, and teaching acting/production/writing.  It’s good to be comfortable in all of these areas (especially since some of them actually PAY a girl), and I’ll probably continue to work in these areas as they provide a different brand of satisfaction – that of realization (vs. the incompleteness of a play un-produced).  Writing is definitely my “Ahhhh” place, but I don’t think I’ll ever be of a mind to stop my other theatrical endeavors… I like wearing more than one theatre hat.

For blog articles written by Tiffany Antone please go to https://lafpi.com/author/tiffanyantone/.  Tiffany’s first blog article is titled “It Takes a Village” dated May 16, 2010.

Tiffany’s Bio

Tiffany is proud to have received her MFA in Playwriting from UCLA’s prestigious school of Theater, Film, and Television, where she also completed her BA in Theater.  She also holds her A.A in acting from The American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Tiffany was a 2008 Hawthornden Fellow, which included a writing residency in Scotland, and a 2009 Sherwood Award Finalist with Center Theatre Group.  Tiffany has received the Tim Robbins Award for plays of social importance, James Pendelton Foundation Prize, Hal Kanter Award in Comedy Writing, Dini Ostrov Stage Spirit Award in Playwriting, the Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme Scholarship, and the Florence Theil Herrscher Award.

Her plays have been read and/or performed in Los Angeles, New York, D.C. and Minneapolis.  Her plays Twigs and Bone and Ana and the Closet were both Jerome Finalists and O’Neil semi-finalists for 2009 and 2010.  Ana and the Closet was also presented at The Kennedy Center’s Page to Stage Festival in 2009.  Her play In the Company of Jane Doe was a Princess Grace semi-finalist in 2006, a winner of the New Plays on Campus series with The Playwrights’ Center, and winner of the 2008 New Works for Young Women contest with the University of Tulsa.  In the Company of Jane Doe premiered in January 2010 at The Powerhouse Theatre (LA Theatre Ensemble). Tiffany’s play The Good Book was a winner of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway play festival and is available through Samuel French publishing.

Other plays include The Low Tide Gang, Ham Brown’s House (Princess Grace Semi-Finalist, 2008), Little Phoenix, Stalled, My Pet George, and From the Rubble. Screenplays include The Sisters Roberts and A Disappearing Woman (Golden Brad Finalist 2009).

Tiffany currently lives and teaches in AZ and runs Little Black Dress INK, a producing org for female playwrights.  You can read more about Tiffany at www.TiffanyAntone.com or on her blog www.AwdsAndEnds.com.

Tiffany acts as an LA FPI Graphics Consultant.

Interview with Playwright Cynthia Wands

Interview, LAFPI, Playwright,

Cynthia Wands cross-examined:

LA FPI Blogger Cynthia Wands has been blogging from day one. Her use of the visual teamed with her intense depth as a writer is phenomenal.
LA FPI Blogger Cynthia Wands has been blogging since 2010. Her use of visual art teamed with her intense depth as a writer is phenomenal.

1.  How did you become a playwright? What brought you to theater?

I was a working actress for several years in San Francisco and Boston. As a child I loved going to see plays (a rare opportunity as my father was in the military and we moved frequently). I remember seeing the Scottish play when I was in junior high school in Northern Maine and it blew my mind. 

2.  What is your favorite play of yours? Why?

I used to think that Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer’s Night Dream” was one of my favorite plays, until I had to play Titania in a run for over 100 performances.  I would be okay never seeing that play again.  Now I tend to remember Christopher Fry’s “The Lady’s Not Burning” as a favorite, but I haven’t seen it in years – so it might be another old chestnut.

3.  What is your favorite production of one of your plays? Why?

I had a reading of my script “The Lost Years” at the Dramatist Guild Footlight Series in Los Angeles that was really wonderful – the cast was very special.

4.  What play by someone else has moved you the most and why?

I remember sobbing at “Rabbit Hole” because of the subject matter and the performances.  It really gutted me.

5.  Who is your favorite playwright? Why?

I like Wendy Wasserstein, and Tina Howe, but I find them dated, in my own conveyor belt of time.  I also like Mary Zimmerman, but some of her writing feels thin and watery.  Maybe it was the rain onstage.

6.  How has your writing changed over the years?

I’m trying to stay away from the easy laughs.

7.  What type of plays do you write? (Dramas, Comedies, Plays with Music, Musicals, Experimental, Avant-garde …) What draws you to it?

I write comedies that have a lot of drama in them.

8.  Do you write any other literary forms? How does this affect/enhance your playwriting?

I’ve written screenplays, and two novels.  They’ve informed my character research, although I have to say that my acting life informs a lot of my approach to conflict within a character’s reach.

9.  Why did you become a blogger for LA FPI?

I read a few of the blogs on the LA FPI page and thought “Wow, these women are so honest about their writing and what they live with.  I wish I could do that.”  So I did.

10.  What is your favorite blog posting?

There was a recent blog on the LA FPI from a writer who wrote that she had a planned her blog to be about being the most unsuccessful playwright ever, and just in the past few days, she had a playwrighting opportunity and that changed her.  I loved reading that.

11.  Who do you consider an influence where your writing is concerned? And, why?

My influences are a crazy quilt of what entertains me:  Old roadrunner cartoons, Emily Dickinson, Jessica Tandy, performance art and my husband’s gothic glass art.  The images and voices inform me of my own searching.

12.  When did you find your voice as a writer? Are you still searching for it?

I ‘m still searching for my voice as a writer.  Sometimes I sound like my twin sister. Sometimes I sound like a sitcom writer.  And other times I can hear my own voice.

13.  Do you have a writing regiment? Can you discuss your process?

I woke up at 3:30am this morning and wrote for two hours and then went back to bed. Usually I like to write late at night.  But I haven’t had the 3:30am call to write before.  I got enough down on paper that it was worth it.  Although I may feel differently by 3:30pm this afternoon.

14.  How do you decide what to write?

My subjects seem to find me.  Or chase me until I write about them. (Now apparently they find me at 3:30 in the morning…)

15.  How important is craft to you?

That’s an odd question for me – that’s like asking an actor or director how important is craft for them?  If they’re (we’re) not skilled enough to create a magical event, then it’s really not the theatre I want to help create. So I feel craft is what we use to create theatre – so I think it’s very important.

16.  What other areas of theater do you participant in?

I will sometimes read scripts as an actor for other playwrights, but that’s the extent of my participation.

17.  How do you feel about the theater community in Los Angeles?

I’m not really as engaged as I would like to be in the Los Angeles theatre community.  I have a lot of family issues on my plate and it’s a challenge to participate. And frankly, because I haven’t been “produced” in Los Angeles I feel like I don’t quite belong here.

18.  How do you battle the negative voice? (insecurity, second guessing)

I have an ongoing battle with my back biting voices.  They can stall my work and create a kind of paralysis.  The only thing that seems to work for me is to belong to different writing groups and be accountable for showing up with pages.

19.  Do you have a theme that you come back to a lot in your work?

I seem to write a lot about the duality of the human/mystic experience.  It’s hard to cram a lot of jokes in that one.

20.  What are you working on now?

I’ve been working on a “new” script for the past year.  I’m in rewrites and it feels like I’m trying to rebuild one of those Christmas gingerbread houses (oh no the marshmellows are melting all over the gumdrops).  Okay, so that was not the best image for this script.  (Again, my problem with going for the cheap joke.) But it’s probably time for a coffee and aspirin!

 

To read all articles by Cynthia Wands, go to https://lafpi.com/author/ravenchild.  Her first blog article is titled “Breaking Up An Iceberg With A Toothpick” dated October 25, 2010.

 Cynthia’s Bio

I am looking to create language based plays which explore the mystic and historic elements of our consciousness.

I worked for many years as a stage actress in San Francisco, Boston and Los Angeles, and had the opportunity to work with some extraordinary theatre artists.  My work included plays produced at the Magic Theatre, San Francisco Rep, Celebration Theatre, and the Berkeley Shakespeare Festival.   I have also had the opportunity to read as an actor for new works for the Theatre Series on KCRW (The House In The City), and independent play readings at the Coast Playhouse (The Crimson Thread), Burbage Theatre (Pearls & Marlowe), and the Marin Playwright’s Festival (Sarah Bernhardt).

My exposure to the plays and playwrights gave me an appreciation for magical realism, and my writing explores the connection between the natural and unknown.

My theatre writing has been informed by studying with Dakota Powell at UCLA and also with Murray Mednick at the Padua Playwrights Workshop.  I have also studied playwright classes with Leon Martell at UCLA, and studied with Jack Grapes in his Method Writing classes.

I have developed scripts at the Ohio State University retreat for playwrights with the ICWP (International Center fro Women’s Playwrights). The Dramatist Guild has hosted a reading of “The Lost Years” in November 2007 for Footlight Series in Los Angeles.

I am a member of The Dramatist Guild, ALAP (Alliance for Los Angeles Playwrights), LAFPI (Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative) and ICWP (International Centre for Women Playwrights).  My theatre works include:  Best Fest Forward, The Lost Years, Emily, and The American Woman. Screenplays include:  Whitley Heights, The Wedding Ring, and The White Datura.

I am the author of two novels, Gift of Afternoon Light, and Improbable Fiction.  My short stories have been published in Mo+h Magazine and Bombshelter Press.

Interview with Playwright Jen Huszcza

Interview, LAFPI, Playwright,

Jen Huszcza detained for questioning:

Jen Huszcza
LA FPI Blogger Jen Huszcza has been blogging with us since 2010. Her dry humor and wit is a gift we like opening again and again and again.

I just finished up my blog week, so this makes me feel so self-indulgent.

How did you become a playwright?  What brought you to theater?

It was all a big mistake actually. I should be a screenwriter with a house in the hills and a BMW. I studied screenwriting in college but jumped over to playwriting because the playwrights were cooler than the screenwriters.

What is your favorite play of yours?  Why?

My favorite play is always the play I finished most recently. My most recent play is a short play called Rebec, CA, and it brings a smile to my face. I smashed a smartphone in that one. I also recently wrote a longer play called Bury That Horse, and it’s about kicking and kissing.

What is your favorite production of one of your plays?  Why?

My favorite production is my first production of my first play, Viper, back at NYU. That was the play that opened it all up for me. It was done in the Dramatic Writing Festival of New Works, and it had an outstanding director, cast, crew. It was beautiful both in process and result.

By the way, shout out to Gary Garrison who produced the New Works Festival back then. He did an outstanding job of surrounding my play with great people.

What play by someone else has moved you the most and why?

Back in the 90s, I saw Letters from Cuba by Maria Irene Fornes at the Signature Theatre in New York and was crying like a baby at the end because it was so beautiful. Fornes also directed the production.

Who is your favorite playwright?  Why?

This is a hard one. I have a core team of playwrights that I love. If I get stuck when I’m writing, I call the team—I’m speaking metaphorically since most of my team is dead.

How has your writing changed over the years?

My plays have become less expensive to produce.

What type of plays do you write?  (Dramas, Comedies, Plays with Music, Musicals, Experimental, Avant-garde …)  What draws you to it?

Crazy, sexy, cool plays. I love physicality. I love writing plays set outside. I love comedy, but I don’t set out to write comedy. I believe experimentation should be done in playwriting. Otherwise, what’s the point? I write women, men, animals. I’ve even gone into vegetables a few times, but they’re hard.

Do you write any other literary forms?  How does this affect/enhance your playwriting?

Yes, I have written long form prose, novels, screenplays, musicals, blogs, essays, short stories. Long form prose & novels: big canvases, I’m comfortable with the epic. Screenplays: condense. Musicals: respect for the lyrical, comfort with the drama in music, impatience with over-sentimentality. Blogs & essays: cohesive thought, what do I want to say. Short stories: character depth.

Why did you become a blogger for LA FPI?

It seemed like a fun thing to do.

What is your favorite blog posting?

Back in January 2012, I wrote about the Kobayashi Maru Scenario.

https://lafpi.com/2012/01/the-kobayashi-maru-scenario/

Do you have a writing regiment?  Can you discuss your process?

I don’t have a writing regiment, but I do have a reading regiment. I read daily.

How important is craft to you?

I used to think craft was not important, then I read play submissions for a variety of theatre companies. Yikes. I can be experimental, but I have a grounding in craft. Writing is no different from anything else. If you want to crochet a scarf, you need to learn the stitches. If you want to paint, you need to learn line and color. Craft is the basics. I also have found that craft comes in handy when you’re developing scripts with actors and directors.

What other areas of theater do you participant in?

I’ve worked box office for a variety of theatres. Trust me, box office is not a cushy job.

How do you feel about the theater community in Los Angeles?

Great acting pool.

Do you have a theme that you come back to a lot in your work?

I have a bag of tricks. There are things I go back to again and again, but I don’t reflect a lot on recurring themes or ideas. Maybe when I’m older, I’ll look back, but I’m not in a looking back stage right now.

What are you working on now?

I am writing a play for an actor friend of mine. It has death and kissing. That’s really all I can say. I’m in the middle of it.

 

For more blog articles by Jen Huszcza, go to https://lafpi.com/author/jen-huszcza/.  Her first blog article is titled Yes, Sure, Okay, Yes dated June 14, 2010.

Jen’s Bio

Jen Huszcza is a playwright currently based in Los Angeles.

She has a BFA in Dramatic Writing and an MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU. After graduating from college, she stayed in New York and worked a variety of day jobs including video librarian and study guide writer. She eventually moved to Los Angeles for better weather and more trees.

Out in Los Angeles, three of her plays have been presented as staged readings in the Monday Night Living Room Series at the Blank Theatre in Hollywood. Also at the Blank, she was an Associate Producer on Michael John LaChiusa’s See What I Wanna See, and she was a Weekly Producer and Playwright Mentor for the Young Playwrights Festival.

She wrote and acted in Gunfighter Nation’s collectively written piece, LA History Project: Pio Pico, Sam Yorty, and the Secret Procession of Los Angeles, presented at the Lost Studio.

She is a script reader for a variety of theatre companies. She is a member of the Playwrights and Directors Lab at the Actors Studio West.

In addition to plays, she has written ad copy, film reviews, blogs, bad poetry, screenplays, a novel, and several short stories.

She has heard numerous pronunciations of her last name, but the one she prefers is Hooo-zhah.

Interview with Playwright Jessica Abrams

Interview, LAFPI, Playwright,

Jessica Abrams interrogation:  

Jessica Abrams
LA FPI Blogger Jessica Abrams started out as a guest blogger during the Los Angeles Fringe Festival in 2012. We’re glad she stayed with us to add to the many voices here on the blog.

1.  How did you become a playwright?  What brought you to theater? I was a dancer after college, but after finding myself in Italy with a sketchy Vegas-type show, I decided the time had come to hang up my dancing shoes… and write about the experience. It led me to screenplays, and some TV, but the heartbreak of not seeing my work produced made me write plays. And in a way, I came home because theatre was where I came from…

2.  What is your favorite play of yours?  Why? My play Easter in Tel Aviv is my favorite play because it represents where I am as a playwright now.  It’s also an example of a story being born from a very specific — and slightly messy– situation that, one day, revealed itself to me as a play.

3.  What is your favorite production of one of your plays?  Why? I haven’t had that many… but I’ll say this: every time a group of actors come together and speak my words, something new and magical is revealed.

4.  Who is your favorite playwright?  Why? It’s so tough to say… Tennessee Williams is at or close to the top.  He gave us such iconic characters, who spoke such a colloquial language expressing desires that, even then, weren’t often readily expressed.  he gave them the right to be profane, to be base, to be real.

5.  How has your writing changed over the years? I’d like to think it gets closer to expressing that core question I have at the center of who I am, the one that prompted me to write in the first place — not necessarily answering it, just asking it.

6.  What type of plays do you write?  (Dramas, Comedies, Plays with Music, Musicals, Experimental, Avant-garde …)  What draws you to it? I write — or aim to write — comedic stories with a dramatic arc.  I try — emphasis on try — to walk that line between comedy and drama… to find funny moments in slightly tragic situations, moments that don’t call for laughs, but for recognition — “oh, shit, I do that too” — the deep belly laughs that we know means  a nerve has been touched.

7.  Do you write any other literary forms?  How does this affect/enhance your playwriting? I write personal essays and TV stuff.  I find playwriting to be much more free, and often feel restricted for instance when writing for the screen — that ‘get in, get out’ idea always hampers me.

8.  Why did you become a blogger for LA FPI? I LOVE this community.  I’m so grateful for it.  To be able to commune in this way, to share stories and touch a nerve with other playwrights — it’s a thing of beauty.  I also love  the freedom of blogging, but also having deadlines.

9. Who do you consider an influence where your writing is concerned? And, why? So many people — mostly my creative network and the way it inspires me.  other female playwrights who are just doing the work, every day.  I am humbled and inspired by them.

10. When did you find your voice as a writer?  Are you still searching for it? I thought I found it in my first play.  Then, writing the second, I found it again.  I continue to “find” it, because even if it’s in me, it’s also lodged somewhere in the story, in its tone, in how its characters are feeling and acting… so it’s constant process of discovery.

11. Do you have a writing regiment?  Can you discuss your process? It’s not a good one lately.  I haven’t written a play in a while.  Right now I’m working on a spec screenplay and a spec TV pilot and I tend to get work done in spurts, mostly after 3 PM because I feel like crap in the morning, usually.  I have a lot of guilt around my willy nilly schedule of late — is that obvious?

12. How do you decide what to write? It comes to me — characters, situations…

13. How important is craft to you? You know… yes and no.

14. What other areas of theater do you participant in? I’m an actress, which I came to fairly late in life, but which really rounds me out as a storyteller.

15. How do you feel about the theater community in Los Angeles?  I think it’s vast, and that makes me so happy, knowing there’s so much creativity happening in a city dedicated to that ‘other’ storytelling mode.  That said, I wish it had more pride and confidence in itself.  I wish it would solidify as just that: a theatre community, rather than let its voice be in the hands of the ‘establishment’ — CTG, etc.  Some of the best theatre I’ve seen here was in a small theatre, often 49-seat house.  Those artists need to be supported, in terms of audience, monies and award recognition.

16. How do you battle the negative voice?  (insecurity, second guessing) I meditate, say mantras, prayers, and novenas.  I also keep in touch with fellow creative souls who understand that voice and battle it themselves.  I used to have a daily calll with a fellow actress, just to bolster each other.  I need to do that again.

17. Do you have a theme that you come back to a lot in your work? Yes — the theme of self-discovery.  identity.

18. What are you working on now?  I’m working on a screenplay and a TV pilot and I need to get back to writing plays ASAP.

 

For other blog articles by Jessica Abrams you can go to https://lafpi.com/author/jessilou/.  Her very first blog post is titled THE WOMEN OF TU-NA HOUSE at The Hollywood Fringe  dated 2012/06/17.

Jessica’s Bio

Jessica Abrams’ play The Laughing Cow had its world premiere this past April at the Meta Theatre on Melrose and received Pick of the Week by LA Weekly. Her short play, Melissa, is currently part of New American Theatre’s Short Play Festival in Los Angeles. The First To Know (the full-length play of which Melissa is a part) was read in the MaD Play Reading Series last Spring, and her solo piece If I Look This Good, Why Do I Feel Like Sh*t? was read at the ExAngeles Writers Collective’s A Month of Sundays Reading Series this past October. Her television writing credits include The Profiler for NBC and Watch Over Me for Fox/MyNetworkTV. She was a guest artist at the Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive in 2010 and is a co-founder of the New Leaf Endeavors Theatre Company. She attended Barnard College of Columbia University in Manhattan.

Interview with Playwright Nancy Beverly

Interview, LAFPI, Playwright,

Nancy Beverly answers 20 questions:

Nancy Beverly
Playwright Nancy Beverly has blogged for LA FPI since the beginning of the blog in April of 2010. Nancy is a diverse voice that you don’t want to miss.

1.  How did you become a playwright?  What brought you to theater?

Mad Magazine.  No kidding.  My friend Gena and I would read it out loud into a tape recorder.  We’d also make up our own stories and fake ads and tape those as well.  I also got tapped on the shoulder (literally) by my grade school principal to be in a stage presentation (it wasn’t exactly a play, more like a patriotic celebration) because he’d seen what a live wire I was just in the hallways of school.

2.  What is your favorite play of yours?  Why?

It’s always the one I’m currently involved in — in this case it’s my nutty comedy called COMMUNITY.  When I’ve heard it out loud and when I read it to myself, I just fall down laughing.

3.  What is your favorite production of one of your plays?  Why?

Too hard to pick.  It’s more like I have favorite moments — Lisa Temple doing the monologue “My New Best Friend” — again, I literally fell out of my chair laughing; Hannah Crum and Mandy Dunlap doing “Happy Wanderer” and I’m brought to tears…

4.  What play by someone else has moved you the most and why?

EXTRAORDINARY CHAMBERS that I saw at the Geffen (Robin & Jennie were there that night!).  Horror was conveyed so simply (a monologue near the end of the piece with hundreds of photos on display behind the actor).

5.  Who is your favorite playwright?  Why?

Don’t have one, I just enjoy plays on a moment by moment basis.

6.  How has your writing changed over the years?

Yep.  A lot more depth now.  I’m not afraid of emotions like I was when I was a kid.

7.  What type of plays do you write?  (Dramas, Comedies, Plays with Music, Musicals, Experimental, Avant-garde …)  What draws you to it?

Dramas filled with comedy.  I like linear storytelling, so my stuff isn’t avant-guarde or experimental.

8.  Do you write any other literary forms?  How does this affect/enhance your playwriting?

I’ve written screenplays, a webseries, a lot of essays… the truth is the truth.  Still trying to figure out how to be effective with the screenplay, though.

9.  Why did you become a blogger for LA FPI?

The energy in the room at Topanga during our first meeting, all of us crammed together in a dressing room, shivering, and yet in high spirits.  What a great group.  I wanted to be part of it.

10. What is your favorite blog posting?

Can’t pick just one, but the moments when I learn something about myself when I’m writing the blog come to mind.  (Same is true of my plays, I always end up learning something.)  That said, one that I wrote last year called “Less is More” about a final rehearsal of OF MICE AND MEN where they had no props, no costumes, no furniture and yet I was a puddle of tears at the end… is a fond one for me.

11. Who do you consider an influence where your writing is concerned? And, why?

Whatever play I’ve just seen.  If something’s really good, I’m in my theatre seat thinkin’ “Oooo, I wanna do that!”

12. When did you find your voice as a writer?  Are you still searching for it?

When I wrote A NEW YOU, my first produced full-length.  The voice is always a work-in-progress, and actually, writing is more about finding the voice of the characters in the play, not about finding MY voice.

13. Do you have a writing regiment?  Can you discuss your process?

If I’m working on a play, then every free night and several hours on the weekend get devoted to it.  I have a quote on my desk from Woody Allen that I’ve had posted since grad school.  In part it reads, “It’s the steadiness that counts.”

14. How do you decide what to write?

Man, it really has to GRAB me.  If an idea is superficial and won’t take me deep into the water, then I won’t work on it for all of the months it takes to make something good.  It has to be a puzzle to figure out, not pre-digested and formulaic.

15. How important is craft to you?

Very.  I re-read parts of Buzz MacLaughlin’s The Playwright’s Process every time I’m working on something new.

16. What other areas of theater do you participant in?

I’ve done performance art and took classes to develop pieces with Danielle Brazell (former Artisic Director at Highways).  Loved it.  Loved creating something in the moment inspired by just the slimmest of suggestions.

17. How do you feel about the theater community in Los Angeles? 

It feels like a real community — witness the Fringe Festival last year.

18. How do you battle the negative voice?  (insecurity, second guessing)

Go see inspirational theatre.  Go to my writers’ group Fierce Backbone every Monday night in support of my fellow writers.  “It’s the steadiness that counts.”

19. Do you have a theme that you come back to a lot in your work?

Yes — there is joy, love, contentment, satisfaction in the present moment.  Not the past, not the future.

20. What are you working on now?

Finding a director (AGAIN) for my film SHELBY’S VACATION.  And keeping my fingers crossed for the production of my play COMMUNITY.

 

To read all LA FPI blog articles by Nancy Beverly go to https://lafpi.com/author/nancybeverly/.  Her very first blog article is titled “Go On Anyway” dated April 25, 2010.  You can find it here. 

Nancy’s Bio

In addition to Cloud’s Rest,which is part of the 2012 Hollywood Fringe Festival through the writer/actor group Fierce Backbone, Nancy Beverly’s most recent theatrical adventure is her play Community, a comedy that takes place at a community theatre, where, on opening night, everything that can go wrong, does. It’s slated for a full production from Fierce Backbone in 2013.

Her most recent award was the selection of her screenplay Shelby’s Vacation for a staged reading in July 2011 in Randolph, Vermont, under the auspices of Pride Films and Plays which operates out of Chicago – and the same script made the semi-finals for the Chicago readings.

In 2010 her one-act Chicago (a.k.a. The Happy Wanderer), was part of “Shorts and Briefs,” a sold-out afternoon of play readings at the Stella Adler’s Gilbert Theatre that were all written and directed by women. The venture grew out of a discussion she, Jan O’Connor and Mary Casey had earlier in the year about the sorry state of women getting their plays produced. They decided to do something about it.

“Shorts and Briefs” was produced under the banner of The L.A. Women’s Theatre Project. Additionally, Beverly’s full-length play Handcrafted Healing was featured in L.A.W.T.P.’s dynamic weekend of play readings in October 2009 – again, all written and directed by women. Beverly developed Handcrafted Healing through Playwrights 6, a writer-run group in Los Angeles, where she was a member from 2001 until 2009.

In August 2007, also in conjunction with P6, Beverly produced her drama Godislav at the Miles Memorial Playhouse in Santa Monica for a month-long run. Additionally, Godislav had the honor of being chosen in 2006 to be part of the Playwrights Showcase of the Western Region in Denver.

West Hollywood’s Celebration Theatre gave Beverly’s coming-of-age dramady A New You its world-premiere in the summer of 2001.

Prior to moving to Los Angeles, Beverly worked at Actors Theatre of Louisville as the Assistant Literary Manager. While at ATL, she had several short plays produced in ATL’s twice-yearly short play showcase. Attack of the Moral Fuzzies, one of those 10-minute comedies, was published in an ATL anthology of short works and has been performed several times a year for 25 years by theatres all around the U.S. and Canada.

Beverly has also written for the Showtime series Women, knocked out 70 articles for the how-to website ehow.com, conducted radio interviews for KPFK’s weekly show IMRU, and gotten up and done performance art under the direction of Danielle Brazell, the former Artistic Director of the performance space Highways in Santa Monica.

She’s also worked in network television as an executive producer’s assistant on and pitched stories to such hit shows as Desperate Housewives and Ghost Whisperer.

SNAPSHOT: A True Story of Love Interrupted By Invasion

Playwright, Uncategorized

Sinnott 2 higher res

Mitzi Sinnott has a big story to tell.  Mitzi Sinnott has the kind of story that a writer would kill for, a story that makes most other personal journey tell-alls seem somewhat trivial.  But like all big stories one lives through, the price paid for doing just that — and coming out on the other side — makes the gift of the story that much more deserving (even to those envious writers among us).

In her one-woman show, Snapshot: A True Story of Love Interrupted by Invasion, Mitzi Sinnott tells the story of growing up in the South as the daughter of a white mother and black father.  There’s enough story right there for a novel and sequel, but Mitzi’s father was sent to Vietnam, and the man that returned was not the vital, artistic, loving man she knew, but a haunted shell who was ultimately diagnosed with schizophrenia.  Mitzi’s attempts to get to know her father led her to Hawaii where he was living and to coping with the death of the man as she knew him.

She tells this story through re-enacting moments of her childhood: of facing schoolmates who taunt her for being the product of a mixed marriage, of a mother who does her best to keep it together in those challenging circumstances.  She gives us a glimpse into her father’s days in the all-black barracks as he sends letters — and love — to his family back home.  She deftly moves between the roles of unsure enlisted, worried mother, bullying schoolmate, scared little girl and confident storyteller.  And she does it with humor and levity.

That’s the thing: despite the weighty subject matter, Mitzi never asks for our sympathy or pity.  Rather, using various tools to tell the story (projected images, the re-enacting of key moments, even dance), Mitzi shares this rocky journey as opposed to dumping it mercilessly.  It helps that the woman we see in front of us is a sheer delight, brimming with confidence, glowing with the desire to let us in, because we know she made it through to the other side, a better person — not to mention, storyteller — for it.

The gift of her burden will pay her, and her audience, back many times over.

Snapshot: The True Story of Love Interrupted By Invasion plays Thursdays through Sundays through April 21 at the Greenway Court Theatre.

— Jessica Abrams

Permission to Say…

Playwright, playwriting,

“You have to give yourself permission to say…” Theresa Rebeck

As a writer, “you have to give yourself permission to say” whatever needs to be said to tell the story – striving always not to sensor the authentic truth of the story.  Don’t sensor yourself.  It’s hard enough to release the flow of words from their birthing chamber without changing them as soon as they reach the light of day for fear of how they might be received.  Fearlessness is needed, as well as being honest in the writing and having confidence in your voice as a writer…

This is what I got from the conversation with Theresa Rebeck  at the Dramatists Guild Symposium on Saturday.  She was quite fascinating…

Tony Kushner

Playwright, playwriting,

 

Tony Kushner recently depressed me.

The LA Times has an Awards Season supplement called The Envelope that comes out every Thursday. It has articles on films with awards season buzz and ads, lots of ads.

In December, Tony Kushner was interviewed in an article in The Envelope because he wrote the screenplay for Lincoln about the president, not the car.

In the interview, he states:

You can have a play, like I did with “Angels,” and it still generates income for me, but it’s not enough for me to live on and have health insurance.

My toast eating jaw dropped open when I read that.

This is Tony Kushner. Angels in America Tony Kushner. Love him or hate him, you can’t deny that he wrote the iconic American play of the 1990s. His plays are required reading and probably still very much in print with shiny nice covers.

If Tony Kushner can’t afford health insurance with just playwriting money, what does that say about the playwriting profession? What does that say about the affordability of health insurance in this country?

Don’t be a playwright in the US. It could kill you.

Is the United States trying to kill off its playwrights? Is there a conspiracy? Are there old men sitting in dark room, smoking cigars, and discussing the eradication of playwrights?  Should we playwrights pack up and move to a country that will give us a living? I’m not exactly sure which country that would be. We might have to invent one because, well, we’re playwrights.