Summer 2016 Fluent CATF Special Edition

CATF SEASON 26

Summer 2016 | Special Edition

Joey Parsons in Allison Gregory’s NOT MEDEA.

CATF:

26 SEASON

Ship’s Log: 1896. A father boards a

What if the show you came to see is

ship and leads a mysterious expedi-

not the show you need to see? A work-

tion bound for Africa. In tow are

ing mother escapes to the sanctuary of

his troubled son, a rebellious young

the theater and encounters a play she

woman, and a skeptical crew. On the

desperately doesn’t want to watch, so

open sea, an unexpected detour resur-

she hijacks the show—and the audi-

rects family secrets and reveals true

ence—leading them through her own

intentions, fundamentally changing the

very personal story. A synthesis of

course of the journey—and their lives.

myth/magic/real world, NOT MEDEA

Christina Anderson creates a telling

is a funny and fierce slap-down about

parable about violence, betrayal, faith,

love, lust, motherhood, and forgive-

and freedom in this moving maritime

ness. And something else entirely.

epic.

“Do you remember…the precise mo“Hope damages us…It weakens one of

ment you fell in love?…The kind that

the most powerful tools we humans

hurts and heals and haunts you like a

possess: doubt. When we doubt, we

starved spirit. Like you won’t survive

question, then we seek answers.”

it. Have you ever known that kind of love?”

COVER: Joey Parsons in Allison Gregory’s NOT MEDEA. Photo by Seth Freeman.

CATF 2016.

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Text and images courtesy of CATF.

Doug is an average guy with an aver-

Four women bond and become

With Eugene O’Neill’s classic Long

age life. Until, that is, he finds himself

one another’s timetable of history.

Day’s Journey into Night as a back-

at a wedding, not as a guest…but as a

Through the vagaries of love, careers,

drop, THE SECOND GIRL is a lyrical,

gift. Surrounded by those that speak

children, lost causes and tragedy, the

wrenching, and caustically funny play.

a language he’s never heard, Doug

women reunite once a year for a photo

Set in the downstairs kitchen of the

realizes he’s little more than a pet.

shoot, chronicling their changing (and

Tyrone family’s summer residence, circa

And when the bride grows danger-

aging) selves. But, when these private

1912, Noone’s characters—two Irish im-

ously fond of him, the prospect of

photographs have the potential to

migrant servant girls and a chauffeur—

returning home becomes even more

become part of a public exhibit, mutiny

struggle with denial, personal respon-

remote. Chisa Hutchinson’s provoca-

erupts and relationships are tested.

sibility, and failure, while searching for

tive and uproariously funny new play

The images unearth secrets and force

love, belonging, and a sense of what it

asks: What does it mean to be the only

the women to question who they are,

really means to call some place ‘home.’

“outsider” in a community? How does it

what they’ve become, and how they’ll

feel to be the “other?”

navigate whatever lies ahead.

“…a broken heart is not a qualification to being Irish—tis getting up with

“I’m not bad, considering I’ve been

“You’re — rock and roll. The space

the pieces of the heart in your hand

intergalactically sex-trafficked and am

launch. Civil rights. The decades that

and asking the fella who broke it if he

being held against my will in a very

chronicle the most sweeping changes

wouldn’t mind giving you a kick in the

strange place, probably light years

in everything. Style. Music. Literature.

head, too. That’s Irish.”

away from everyone and everything I

You’re my — sundial, my — alphabet.

know and love.”

My guide to better living. You’re my memorial to all that.

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Michael McKowen

abstracting images

By Nancy McKeithen

I

f you’ve been to CATF — the Contemporary American Theater Festival — since 2008, you’ve likely seen the work of artist Michael McKowen. That was his first year at the Festival, and he was props master. The next, scenic sculptor. Then videographer. Then exhibiting artist. This year, his work is featured on the five play posters and the cover of the Festival brochure.

A Creative Process Unlike Any Other “I’ve never worked like this, specifically for an outcome like this,” says McKowen of his collaboration with CATF Producing Director Ed Herendeen to create the images. One where neither of them knew what they were going for, he adds — drawings or three-dimensional pieces or something else — but something different for sure, a new look, not stock images. McKowen suggested adding texture and color. Ed liked that and sent him the scripts to read. A back-and-forth exchange of research and ideas, questions and many conversations ensued.

At the time, McKowen was starting a new semester of teaching 3-D ObjectMaking at Wheeling Jesuit University, and the subject was on his mind. “Maybe what these are…is three-dimensional assembled objects that we’ll photograph,” he suggested to Ed, who responded with interest and uncertainty — and a go-ahead. u

The Festival Image (left): “There’s this Chinese artist, Cai Guo-Qiang, who specializes in gunpowder and is doing great work. I wanted to try that, so I made up a 2 x 3-ft form and set all this texture on it — layers of tissue paper and wood glue and joint compound — then sanded and removed and put [texture] back on and kept going through this process. Then I laid out the pattern with gunpowder. You have to cover it. The art of the whole gunpowder thing is controlling the way it smokes. The smoke is what gives you the color. And it’s what will affect the surface the most. So after figuring out how I wanted to do that, I just laid it out, set it on fire and sealed it after that. Ed loved the idea of circles, absolutely loved it. That was really easy.” — Michael McKowen

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Photo by Ron Blunt

Above: McKowen created the 14-foot Christ sculpture for “From Prague” [2011]. Below: McKowen was hired as scenic sculptor for “Inana” [2010], which had relief sculptures all around the stage as well as two full-size three-dimensional statues on stage. “I spent the summer sculpting foam and then sealing and painting the foam so it looked like stone,” says McKowen.

Photo by LaBrell Guy

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This image is from a video that McKowen shot of actor Alex Podulke — Julian in “Uncanny Valley” [2014] in his office at CATF. “I made the office soundproof and I put black fabric all over the place,” he says. Working with Director Tom Dugdale, “We shot Alex in the space. Tom would say, ‘Alex, look up. Alex, look to the left. Alex, move your chin.’ I just lit it and shot it, and it ended up being the piece that was projected during the performance,” says McKowen. When the show went Off-Broadway later that year, his video piece went with it. “That was one of those projects that changed my life.”

From a video by Michael McKowen

Photo by LaBrell Guy

For “Eelwax Jesus” [2010], McKowen designed a three-foot dancing vagina. “It was a rock opera kind of thing with all kinds of video projection,” he says of the play. “There’s one number with the gynecologist character and his wife, who claims that her husband is always bringing his work home. At the moment the door opens, the number, “Gynecology,” begins and the vagina dances in.” u

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McKowen and Herendeen would be moving through a three-dimensional process to get back to a two-dimensional process — an image.

“The biggest advantage to doing this threedimensionally is that you can light it,” explains McKowen. “What makes three-dimensional work stand out is light. So now we can light things and we can shoot it in 20 different ways: We can shoot closeups, we can shoot wide shots, we can light it different ways. Suddenly, instead of having one stock image to choose from [for each play], we can do 20, 30, 50 different looks from each piece.

“The hassle is that it takes so much longer to physically make a piece than it does to find a photograph.”

He admits it was a strain on the collaboration. From last Thanksgiving to late spring, McKowen worked on the pieces almost every day, with time spent on research and development as well. “You don’t know what’s going to work and what isn’t,” he says.

pen where you won’t have time to create and explore your creative visions. So while I have that opportunity, I’m trying to soak the most out of it.”

A Distinctive Way of Working

The Path to the Groove

McKowen likes to work on more than one piece at a time — a physical piece he can work on while standing and interact with; and editing or writing or doing graphic design on the computer — moving between them roughly every hour-and-a-half for a break.

“It’s just like going on a date,” he says. “I spend some time with one piece. When the date’s over, I go back to the other work and I just keep going back and forth. That really helps to keep a nice perspective on each piece, because you’re really cleansing your palette in a way. And then coming back, you’re still being creatively active. All the energy you have while you’re building a physical piece, you take it back to the video piece. And when you need some release, you go back to the physical piece.

“When I’m awake, I try to be as productive as I can, and when I’m not being productive I feel like I’m wasting time,” McKowen admits. It explains in part why he works concurrently on his own projects and professional projects.

“It took me a long time to hit a creative groove where I could really create at will, and do it without waiting for the right moment,” he says. “Once you find that groove, you don’t want to stop. You just want to ride it because you have no idea when it’s going to end…or when something in your life is going to hap-

McKowen says he had always wanted be able to take an idea — anything that flew into his head — grab it and let it pull him some place and create something out of it. “But I wasn’t really able to do that. I didn’t have that kind of control or that kind of vision.”

He followed his sister, Peggy, to WVU, where he started out as a painting major and ended up with a degree in theater and design. “But again, I was never really sold on what I wanted to be, because I was always looking for more,” McKowen says.

So he continued working as a designer in film and theater, studied costume and theater design at NYU, got his Masters there, and developed an interest in assemblage art and writing. “It was there [at NYU] I learned how to be an artist and how to control the elements of design.” Still, he was applying his skills to someone else’s idea, “never generating the very beginning of something,” he says.

Looking back, McKowen thinks one of the things stifling him was a need to define himself, “to pick one medium that was going to say ‘This is who I am.’” After six years in New York City, he moved to Dallas — and found new artistic insight: “to let whatever happens happen…and not try to control it.”

Things broke loose. He started making boxes from found objects and repurposed materials —

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“It took me a long time to hit a creative groove where I could really create at will, and do it without waiting for the right moment,” says McKowen. “Once you find that groove, you don’t want to stop.”

Photo provided by the artist

McKowen in his studio, working on a piece for “The World of the Willing,” a multimdia exhibit with video, assemblage art, painting, drawing, costumes and props. The show travels to different locations and was part of CATF in 2015.

8-1/2-inch cubes with a light source inside and a glass eyepiece that offered distorted views. He didn’t know what he was going to do with them, but he kept on making them.

Concurrently, he started studying film at SMU and got a second MFA, in film production. And started writing scripts about the pieces he was making — one, about a box-maker who’s making boxes to try to get back to his long-lost love by looking into them and letting his memories take him there. Movie posters and production followed.

With his work being cross-pollinated by the new skills he was learning, McKowen had developed the ability to create an idea or a character or a costume that would create an entire storyline. “It was really just moving freely,” he says. “As you start to accumulate more things, you’re starting to build this world. At that point, I can’t turn it off. Something happens, you turn it into something else. That’s really it.”

All in the Family You might say that art is the family business. McKowen’s maternal grandfather was a freelance artist in Latrobe, PA, who made his living painting religious icons for churches and doing pieces for schools and libraries.

His mother, a freelance artist, taught art at Penn State; her sister, McKowen’s aunt, worked in advertising and free-lanced. His Uncle Tony is an architect; his Uncle Larry paints as an avocation. His sister, Peg, an artist and designer, is associate producing director at CATF. His brother James, a photographer, and his nephew Ryan, a filmmaker and musician.

“So art is all around us, all the time, always has been,” says McKowen.

The CATF Images McKowen wanted all six pieces to be the same dimension, to give them a collective power and presence. u fluent | 9

pen/man/ship It looks like a ship’s mast. When Ed

and I first met, we both brought in pictures of ships.

And what I liked about [that idea] was that it could be really abstract, really become these diagonal lines radiating from a center. There are so many interesting things you can do with that. And Ed liked it because it communicated the idea of a ship. So the next thing was how to depict it. We both knew it had to be sort of rustic and heavy and done out of wood and with metal on it — and not fakey. Unlike a stock photo where it’s a flat image, we we’re going to make something three-dimensional. If you’re actually going to sell the idea of this rustic boat voyage from the late 1800s, it has to be real. It has to be really worn wood and worn metal. We agreed on that right away. The piece was easy, but it took a long time, because there are four or five different vanishing points of the lines. It was crazy just to figure that out, the arithmetic aspect of it. But conceptually it was easy. — Michael McKowen

Not Medea When I met with Ed, he said, “I have this idea of a

dilapidated playground with rusted swings.” So my challenge was to actually make something three-dimensional that would do the same thing [as a stock photo] that he wanted the playground to do. There was something about the idea of kids and toys and something that’s been discarded and abandoned that kind of worked. So I thought, “What about baby dolls?” Because “Not Medea” is based on the play “Medea,” somehow the crumbling decay of Greek columns…maybe that’s in there. So I presented all that to Ed and he was willing to go forward. I started cutting up baby dolls — I got them at Salvation Army stores — into pieces, not knowing how they’re were going to work out. I really liked my first sample, a small piece to show Ed, but he wanted to explore a different direction, so we re-conceived it completely. We ended up doing three baby dolls that appear to be drifting, lost in a liquid or in some kind of space, with different pieces of them rising up from the surface of the piece. Ed loved that. So that piece was done and I moved on to the others.

Even if we weren’t going to use the first sample piece for CATF, I wanted to develop it because I want to use it for something, in a show of my own. So I went ahead and finished it and framed it, the whole thing. And when I took the images to CATF, I included the sample and everyone in the office picked it. And that’s what you see in the program, the sample. — Michael McKowen

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The Wedding Gift Ed had talked to the playwright about what

she wanted — something really in-your-face aggressive...like two pieces of fruit having sex. So I researched sexual fruit, and then I started looking for pieces that seemed phallic or sexual in some kind of way. I found some interesting stuff. The female fruit is this Japanese pear that splits open down the center and has a hub with all its fruit gushing out. The other one is an African fruit. I started doing sketches of these and Ed really liked them, so I just started sculpting one out of foam. The whole thing was to try to make these two look like they were interacting in a lovely way, like they were together, not vulgar or crass, but actually leaving a strong sexual vibe. Then we wanted to do everything really slick and glossy, with sexual colors. This was to be really sensual in a lot of ways. It was pretty straightforward once we started clicking. I also manipulated them [the fruits] somewhat because I wanted some texture and I wanted to repeat the round shape that occurs on the surfaces of the fruit. I sort of made them my own in a way. — Michael McKowen

The Second Girl This was the toughest one. When we first met in

Shepherdstown, Ed was like: “I don’t know….” And I was like “I don’t know either.” We kicked around very literal ideas: a table that’s set, that looks like it’s from 1918, that has plates, a teacup or silverware. Or maybe a locket. There are so many things that you could do to re-create what the play is about if you’re just setting up a photograph. But we had to figure out how to abstract that, so we were creating the same idea through textures or whatever it was we happened to be working with. Ed really liked the idea of Ireland and somehow communicating the idea of it and this Irish émigré who comes to America and ends up being the servant in this household. We decided to create the shape of the island of Ireland, and we did it out of wood floor planks, or what’s supposed to look like wood floor planks. That gives you a sense of architecture, and also a sense that maybe it came from the kitchen of some home. I engraved and painted a sort of angelic face of this woman who is looking — her gaze would be down to the lower left corner of the piece — toward her route to America. Everything we used is real: real wood, real lace, real tablecloth, to create something that is lovely and sort of dramatic in the piece. That was a struggle. We didn’t get this piece done until the very last minute. Things like how to lay out the lace — that was the most challenging. — Michael McKowen u

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20th Century Blues This was the best collaboration

because it was one I really had no idea how to resolve.

Ed said, “What this play is really about is four friends who spent those decades together. They’re celebrating 40 years of their relationship. They’re gone through the 60s and 70s and 80s and they’ve seen how everything has changed.”

I’ve always been a big fan of subway art and posters...they just paste one right on top the other on top the other on top the other. Probably 30 or 40 years ago, someone figured out if you can control how you rip them off, you can rip off a single layer, or you can rip off multiple layers...and create beautiful abstract pieces out of these different layers of imagery.

So I said, “Ed, why don’t we do this, because then I can take all of your two-dimensional ideas and do something three-dimensional with them. I can rip, and they’ll physically be stacked on top of each other. There’ll be a three-dimensionality to it. In this case, it makes sense that they’re photographs. The photographs represent something; they’re actually becoming the piece themselves.” So, I put together imagery that Ed suggested — of protest rallies, the women’s rights movement, that kind of stuff — and I manipulated them to where they really became more graphic than photograph. We came up with a

Right: “A Unique Collaboration”: 7 new works inspired by and created for the 2016 Contemporary American Theater Festival by Michael McKowen with director Ed Herendeen.

Through July 31, 2016 at The Frank Center Gallery on the campus of Shepherd University.

“This is the product of a unique collaboration between myself and Ed Herendeen. Our goal was to develop a collection of three-dimensional mixed-media art works: physical interpretations of text and emotion conjured by the scripts. These large-scale works served as the basis for the final images selected to express the essence of each play.”

— Michael McKowen

Contact the artist: www.michaelmckowen.com | michaelmckowen@yahoo.com 972.841.1757

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palette, and after that, it really became a sense of how to lay things out. What needed to be where, stuff that really didn’t involve Ed, just me working out the composition. And that was it. — Michael McKowen

pen/man/ship

by Christina Anderson

NOT MEDEA

AN NNPN Rolling world premiere by Allison Gregory

THE WEDDING GIFT world premiere by Chisa Hutchinson

20TH CENTURY BLUES world premiere by Susan Miller

THE SECOND GIRL

by Ronan Noone

July 8 - 31

contemporaryamericantheaterfestival AT S H E P H E R D U N I V E R S I T Y

CATF.ORG • 800.999.CATF fluent | 13

Ma

By Sean O’Leary

ay Adrales:

STRANGER IN A FAMILIAR LAND

Y

ou could argue that it all started with Homer transporting the always-beset Odysseus from one strange and scary place to another. And Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels emphatically established it as a literary genre. Then, Robert Heinlein’s 1961 novel, Stranger in a Strange Land, gave the genre a name. So that by the time Charlton Heston donned a loincloth in “Planet of The Apes” and made “the stranger in a strange land” a pop-culture phenomenon, we were accustomed to bonding with unfortunate outsiders who struggle to adapt to alien cultures where convention as they or as we know it is turned on its head.

And why do authors and playwrights employ the now-familiar “stranger in a strange land” trope? Sometimes to promote visions of a better life and a better society, sometimes to warn us against unforeseen dangers to ourselves or the environment, often to expose society’s absurdities and hypocrisies, and sometimes just to entertain (“Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”) But, regardless of their literary goals, authors do it because they understand that our tendency to identify with helpless strangers is spontaneous and profound and that it causes us, along with our endangered heroes, to sharpen our senses, become more alert, and experience more intensely the worlds into which they plunge us.

It’s that last quality — intense sensation — upon which playwright Chisa Hutchinson seizes in her new play, “The Wedding Gift,” in which she uses a stranger in a strange land — a really strange land — to help us

empathically grasp the experience of being oppressed by a society that regards you as not just lesser, but as an object to be employed or dismissed on a whim; to be treated as sensate, but not altogether human; to occasionally be the object of sympathy, but of a mostly condescending kind…in short, to experience a new world as African-Americans often experience this world and our society today.

Any play dealing with issues of race in this time and place enters a fraught territory where what should be a vicarious theatrical experience can, if not handled deftly, deteriorate into polemic. The challenge facing the cast and crew of “The Wedding Gift” is to deliver Chisa Hutchinson’s play in a way that immerses us not in message, but in visceral sensation. And the responsibility for managing that high-wire act falls primarily on the play’s director, May Adrales.

May Adrales comes to us from the borderlands of our social and cultural divide. Her parents immigrated to this country from the Philippines and settled in southwest Virginia in the Appalachian foothills, where racial and cultural diversity begin to recede into a sea of whiteness. Her parents are professionals — her father a surgeon and her mother a nurse — so she enjoyed an economically comfortable childhood. At the same time, as a child of immigrants whose Asian heritage is evident in her features, Adrales was aware of and was occasionally reminded of her status as an outsider.

From that milieu emerged a young woman determined to “be the change you wish to see in the u fluent | 15

world.” After a flirtation with becoming a lawyer and an abortive stint as a staffer at The Council on Foreign Relations in New York City, Adrales succumbed to a passion at which she had been dabbling all along.

Introduced to theater while in high school, Adrales continued to exercise her nascent interest by spending evenings and weekends writing and directing what she now describes as “very political plays” and “feminist diatribes” — just the sort of thing that will earn you a nasty comeuppance once a reviewer deigns to pay attention to what you’re doing. And that’s just what Adrales got. Fortunately for her, the reviewer also recognized that, while her writing was a tad tendentious, her skill at directing was evident. And Adrales was humble enough to realize the reviewer might have a point.

So, the advocate for social justice who at that point had no formal theatrical training decided to dedicate herself to pursuing a career in directing.

And that change in direction enabled her to discover something about theater, about audiences and about herself — we’re all suckers for a great story.

Any actor or wannabe actor who has ever trod the boards discovered with her first step on stage that the imperative is to connect emotionally with the other characters and with the audience because, without their empathic support, you’re alone, naked, and in irredeemable misery. And when that fear burns in your gut, peripheral concerns about the play’s message, its insights into the human condition, in fact any abstract consideration whatever, completely evaporates. It’s all about human beings caring with and for each other in the moment…or it’s nothing.

For some activists who try to make the transition to artist, that leap is impossible. It takes them too far from their real passion, it may feel like an abandonment of the cause, or it’s simply too frightening a place to go. But, for those who do make the leap, a revelation awaits them. In telling stories, the kinds of stories over which human beings bond, insight and even ideology just emanate and, in a few triumphant instances, they are internalized by audiences who may not have the slightest idea they’ve been infused with a new or expanded outlook.

Generations of people have gone around humming “Wouldn’t it Be Loverly” and “On The Street Where You Live” from “My Fair Lady,” utterly unaware they’ve 16 | fluent

just seen and, more importantly, assimilated a commentary that savages class-dominated society and insists on the intrinsic nobility of us all. Even George Bernard Shaw, whose play “Pygmalion” was the basis for “My Fair Lady,” might have winced at what some people have derided as a cheesy bowdlerization of his work. But, my guess is that he would have recognized that while the sugar coating of “My Fair Lady” makes the pill go down more easily, it doesn’t diminish the way in which it’s digested. It just makes the play and its message accessible to a far wider audience.

And that change in direction enabled her to discover something about theater, about audiences and about herself — we’re all suckers for a great story.

But, while audiences may be oblivious to the trick being played upon them, the artists who create the trick cannot be oblivious. So, in a play like “The Wedding Gift” that endeavors to empathically bridge the gap between the lived experiences of two groups of people who share the same society while encountering it from radically different points on the spectrum, it’s appropriate and maybe even necessary that we have a director from the borderlands like May Adrales — one who is not an immigrant, but is the daughter of immigrants; one who is not African-American, but neither is she Caucasian; one whose family was not impoverished, but neither were they rich; and most importantly one for whom both sides in America’s most searing and entrenched divide are emotionally and intellectually accessible.

Those experiences and the resulting sensibilities probably account for why May Adrales often finds herself directing “stranger in a strange land” types of plays in New York and in regional theaters nationwide.

They include Katori Hall’s “Whaddabloodclot!!!” at

the Williamstown Theater Festival, David Henry Hwang’s “Chinglish” at Portland Center Stage and Syracuse Stage, Kimber Lee’s “Tokyo Fish Story” at the Old Globe and at the Manhattan Theater Club, Lauren Yee’s “Ching Chong Chinaman” at Pan Asian Rep, and most recently Qui Nguyen’s “Vietgone” at South Coast Rep and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which won the 2015 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award.

It’s an astonishing body of work that has brought May Adrales innumerable awards, including the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation’s inaugural Denham Fellowship and the Paul Green Emerging Directing award.

In short, May Adrales is highly esteemed and in even higher demand, which is testimony not just to the popularity of her work, but also to its importance for us as individuals and as a society. So, in the end, by telling stories, May Adrales has become the social activist she always intended to be. fluent

The Bridge Fine Art & Framing Gallery Summer Exhibit 2016, Special All Mediums CATF Exhibit Paintings, Ceramics, Photography & More • Garden Open Weekends, June 25–July 31

8566 Shepherdstown Pike, Shepherdstown WV 25443 • 304.876.2300 Fine Art, Ceramics, Photography & Custom Framing fluent | 17

INSIDE CATF : SEASON 26

five voices | five plays Christina Anderson pen/man/ship CATF: This is a big play with a small cast. It deals with

black/white, rich/poor, male/female, young/old, free/ slave, and gay/straight issues…do you need a bigger boat?

CHRISTINA ANDERSON: One of the first things Lucie Tiberghien, who is directing the play, asked me was, “How big is this boat?” When this play was produced at the Magic Theater in San Francisco, interns built a dramaturgy wall and filled it — in the shape of a boat — with all the images and themes that the play addresses. It took up the whole wall, reaching into the ceiling. The first time I saw that wall, I thought: “This is a huge play.”

CATF: Explain the title of your play, “pen/man/ship.”

CHRISTINA: When I was doing research on the time

Interviews by Sharon J. Anderson

Researched, interviewed and edited by Sharon J. Anderson, CATF Trustee/Professional Story Listener and Creative Director. sharonjanderson.com Interviews reprinted with permission from catf.

Graphics provided by catf.

18 | fluent

period of this play, I came across a lot of journals and letters because that is how people communicated and made notes of their existence. I knew someone was going to be keeping a log on the ship. Then I came across the word, “penmanship.” I wouldn’t have figured out that title if I hadn’t seen that word. I want the titles of my plays to reflect the engines of my plays.

CATF: Ed Herendeen described this play as “Mutiny

on the Bounty” meets “12 Years a Slave” meets “Roots” meets “Moby Dick.” How would you describe it?

CHRISTINA: I would describe the play as an examination of exceptionalism, and the ripple effect of a fatal encounter. I wrote this play around the time George Zimmerman was to be charged with shooting Trayvon Martin. No one is 100% sure how that encounter went down except for the two men who were involved and one of them was dead. I was fascinated that in our cen-

into play. Zimmerman’s lawyers were saying that he was Hispanic so this wasn’t a black/white issue. Then Trayvon’s parents were saying that he was a good kid.

So I started looking at the history of exceptionalism in communities of color around 1890.

CATF: How do you illustrate “exceptionalism” in your

play?

CHRISTINA: With the character of Charles. He has

earned the trust and “camaraderie” of white people to give him access to this ship, money and job. He also kind of sits on his “throne” because of that. He has allowed these gifts and opportunities to inflate his ego.

This has also made him believe that he’s above a lot of people, which in a way, leads to his downfall.

CATF: Let’s talk about Ruby. In this play, she’s de-

tury with all these cameras and devices that this was still possible. The only real evidence we have of this encounter is a scream that is heard over a 9-1-1 call.

CATF: This play takes place after slavery, emancipation

and the Jim Crow laws, but before the Civil Rights movement. You go back in time to make your point about exceptionalism. Why go back in time? How does that make it relevant for today?

CHRISTINA: The kernel of this play started as an assignment in grad school. The theme was the trope of a “fallen woman.” I was already looking at that time period and what was happening to black people. Then I had a residency at Magic Theater where I was surrounded by water because Magic is right next to the Golden Gate Bridge. Every day whenever I pulled into the parking lot, the water and the breeze would hit my face; something I never experienced when I was growing up in Kansas — a land-locked state. Beautiful boats would go by, and I had never actually been in a boat.

Actually, I’ve never been on a ship.

At the same time, the Trayvon Martin incident happened and the argument of exceptionalism came

scribed as “pure darkness” or “darkness on this ship,” etc. Is she the conscience of this play? Is she the devil?

CHRISTINA: She is not the devil. In my ship research, I learned how poorly women were treated, and was fascinated by that. I knew that there was going to be a protest on this ship, and I knew that I wanted Ruby to lead it.

CATF: Why?

CHRISTINA: Because I wanted to push against this

narrative of women being trouble on a ship. I wanted to write a different story. I was interested in a woman becoming the voice for these men because in so many ship narratives, women get tossed around like coins.

I was writing this play before Black Lives Matter, by the way. Three women created the kernel of the Black Lives Matter movement.

CATF: Ruby says, “Hope damages us. It weakens one

of the most powerful tools we humans possess: doubt.

When we doubt, we question then we seek answers.

Humans achieve knowledge, enlightenment.” Hope damages us…really?

CHRISTINA: Yes, Ruby’s a tough woman. But I don’t believe hope damages us. Ruby as a character comes from a unique period. Back then, church was also a place for political conversations and strategy. When Jim Crow and all the lynching and murders were happening, a sect of black people turned its back on religion and Christianity and become atheist. In Ruby’s u fluent | 19

eyes, when people turned to prayer to seek an answer from the Lord, they needed to be reminded about church oppression.

CATF: Earlier in the play, Ruby says, “The religion you

practice is a belief used to confine the thoughts and spirits of colored people even after the Emancipation set us free.”

Is that why she changes the word, “light” in a scripture verse to the word, “darkness?”

CHRISTINA: It’s twofold. Ruby is trying to demote the sacredness of scripture, and she’s also saying, “I can have a belief of my own.” The notion of darkness and light travels throughout the play. The sun blisters down on the upper level of the ship. The lower level is dank and dark. Charles reaches his descent in the pit of the ship. Even at the end of the play, there’s darkness. When I was writing the play, I knew that we would never get off that ship. We would not see the characters board that ship, and we would not see them get off because I wanted that space of limbo.

CATF: In an Atlantic article entitled, “There Is No

Post-Racial America,” Ta-Nehisi Coates writes, “We should seek not a world where the black race and white race live in harmony, but a world in which the terms black and white have no real political meaning.”

What do you think of that?

CHRISTINA: How in the hell are we going to do that? I could say that it would be awesome. A couple of years ago, I wrote a solo show called “Hollow Roots.” It’s about a woman who looks to be black to us and over the course of the play, we find out that she’s lost her blackness and now represents the start of post-racism.

It was when Obama was taking office and white people were saying, “Wait! Wait! This means this society is post-racial!” Only white people were talking about it.

They weren’t talking about the repercussions of this for people of color. I wanted to write this play from this black women’s point of view and her losing her identity.

Because race has a huge history of oppression in it, it’s going to be tough to get to that place. I don’t know if that place is as much of a utopia as we say it is.

That was what I was wrestling with in that solo piece.

I’m working on a companion piece right now because here we are eight years later and we have Black Lives Matter. There’s a huge investment in the upcoming 20 | fluent

generation of black people to hold on to blackness for their dear life.

CATF: You have said that you want to, “create the kind

of theater that will ignite change.”

“Ignite” is a pretty potent verb.

CHRISTINA: I do a ton of research and pull historical references for my plays because I think we’re living in a time period where our memory of oppression, violence and tragedy is just so short-term. We can’t learn if we keep forgetting, especially with something like “pen/man/ship.” People always ask, “Were people really trying to build penal colonies in Liberia as the play narrates?” Actually, my research was about penal colonies in Australia. Still, no one ever says, “That’s ridiculous. They couldn’t build a penal colony in Liberia.”

They all say, “I didn’t know that.”

In terms of igniting change, I don’t think my plays will start a revolution, but I do hope when someone sees my work that it sparks a conversation, that it sparks a way of thinking, that it sparks them going back, reading things, and asking questions. God forbid that we ever again come up against something like Jim Crow. But if we are in a place where we remember and learn lessons, we’ll react differently.

CATF: Sarah Ruhl — a playwright you admire — has

said, “I think a person has to believe in something or search out some kind of faith . . . either you know why you live or it’s all small unnecessary bits.” Why are you living?

CHRISTINA: I’m living to be a writer. I’m living to be a teacher. I’m living to be a black woman in the year 2016. I’m living to be a partner, a daughter, a member of my community. I’m living to speak. I’m living to breathe, to hold somebody’s hands, to hold somebody up. I’m living to lean on somebody.

CATF: Is there a question you wish an interviewer

would ask you?

CHRISTINA: I wish someone would ask me, “Is there something that’s not in your bio that you would want people to know about you?”

CATF: Is there a question you would refuse to answer?

CHRISTINA: I would refuse to answer any question

asking me to speak out against any black artist.

CATF: Maria Irene Fornes said, “We can only do what

is possible for us to do. But still it is good to know what the impossible is.” What’s the impossible for you?

CHRISTINA: Thinking small is impossible for me.

Writing small is impossible for me.

Allison Gregory Not Medea CATF: Have your children seen or read this play?

ALLISON: No, they haven’t. Very early on in the process,

my daughter (who was then 13 years old) read the part of the Chorus. My initial intention was to write a onewoman play, then suddenly the Chorus just showed up and started talking. I had my daughter read the part because the Chorus is representative of a much younger voice. That said, the character of the Chorus is not my daughter.

CATF: The “Chorus” just showed up?

ALLISON: Yes, it really threw me. My goal was to write

a play that basically investigated intimate moments in an epic story. What is more epic than “Medea?” And what is more intimate than motherhood? Everything was going great, the Woman was talking up a storm, and then this character — the Chorus — just showed up and barged her way into the play. Then when Jason showed up, I knew all bets were off.

CATF: Is this voice inside of you? Outside of you? Is it

your muse?

ALLISON: I can’t tell you exactly except that I trust that it is the part of me that knows more than my research or my planning or my structured brain. It is the part of me that is impulsive and usually comes from a very honest and visceral place. I trust that.

CATF: Your play will be in Studio 112, CATF’s smallest

venue. Ed says that we love it when people walk out of there “really fucked up.” Are you hoping for the same result with “Not Medea?”

ALLISON: I’m excited about that space because of the meta-theatricality of the play. It will unseat people.

Some people will question it. Some will be annoyed.

Some will be uncomfortable. Ultimately, I hope people will be drawn in, and if not empathetic to this character’s situation, more understanding of it.

CATF: The original play Medea includes this famous

line: Of all the creatures that have life and reason, we women have the worst lot.” Is this still true?

ALLISON: No. I think we are in a hard-fought moment.

Now there is an embracing of womanhood, and that includes motherhood and wifehood and parenthood and loverhood…all of the “hoods.” We are owning it. I hate when people ask, “Can women have it all and still be happy?” No one ever poses that question to men so can we just get that stupid phrase off of the table?

Everybody fights. Men and women fight for what they want. The trick is to figure out if getting what you want really makes you happy.

Medea got what she thought she wanted, and it made her the winner, but also supremely, supremely unhappy, and it devastated her world.

CATF: Here are some lines from “Not Medea”:

“There’s a certain insanity to being a mother.”

“Children are sometime a burden.” “Parents are most of the time filled with dread.” Are you a stressed-out mother?

ALLISON: Is there a mother who isn’t stressed out? I think that’s part of the territory.

CATF: Kathryn Hepburn once said: “Being a housewife

and a mother is the biggest job in the world, but if it doesn’t interest you, don’t do it. It didn’t interest me, so I didn’t do it. Anyway, I would have been a terrible parent. The first time my child didn’t do what I wanted, I would have killed him.”

ALLISON: I completely identify with that. Steven, my husband, and I talk about our bad parenting moments or days. The moments often stretch into days. We’ll talk about it and say, “Yeah, I wasn’t proud of that.”

We are parents who every day are trying to be better parents. Luckily, kids are hopeful and forgiving. u

fluent | 21

CATF: Let me follow up with an Anne Sexton quote:

“All I wanted was a little piece of life, to be married, to have children. I was trying my damndest to lead a conventional life, for that was how I was brought up, and it was what my husband wanted of me. But one can’t build little white picket fences to keep the nightmares out.”

ALLISON: That’s really powerful. There’s this assumption that when you settle down and have kids, you somehow fall into these conventions, and frankly, my experience of it was and continues to be that there’s no settling down when you have kids. Everything comes up and everything falls apart.

It’s a huge disruption on a daily, often minute-by-minute, basis. And I’m not talking about losing a child. I’m talking about the day-to-day of trying to be a parent.

Losing a child is so unfathomable to me that I was able to go there in this play because I knew it wasn’t me. I hoped in writing it, I would take part of that experience with me and have a little bit more occupying the whole of what life is. God willing, we don’t all lose a child, but we might have a bigger footstep in the world if we did.

CATF: The Woman in this play says this about theater:

“…it’s people-powered. It’s storytelling around the campfire…we’re all surrounded by darkness.”

ALLISON: The darkness I’m talking about is, in a way, a protective darkness. We don’t always see what’s coming at us. Metaphorically, if you are at a campfire, you are in a circle of light, but are surrounded by darkness.

There’s something terribly exciting about that, and you share things that you wouldn’t share sitting across from one another in a restaurant or sitting in a car chatting. The campfire might bring out other parts of ourselves: our wonder, our dread — all of what we don’t talk about on a daily basis.

CATF: At the end of this play, you write: “The gods al-

ways have a plan…the gods find a way to do what they want, against your expectations.” Do they?

ALLISON: I think that’s what life is. My world is being determined in spite of me. We are searching for control, we are searching for our path in the world, but our path is going to happen in spite of us. I don’t mean that as a futile thing or karma. I just mean that we’re a piece 22 | fluent

“…in a children’s play. I have to stay on story. If I go off story, I will hear immediately from my audience. They will squirm or talk or stand or say out loud their opinion, whereas an adult audience is better trained. They will just sit quietly and go to sleep.”

—Allison Gregory of the universe. Let’s be honest with ourselves. The world happens to us. What this play is talking about is that we don’t always have control, we don’t always have the best idea, we don’t always make the best decisions.

CATF: How do you balance that with this line from

“Not Medea”: “Make your own nature, not the advice of others, your guide in life.”

ALLISON: That’s the conflict of being alive. That is the struggle of the humanity. If you don’t have control or a say, why do anything? That doesn’t work. We do make our luck by being prepared, by being good people, by being honest, but I do think there’s an element of fate and luck; a large part of our living that we don’t get to decide.

CATF: Euripides, who wrote “Medea,” said, “Question

everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.”

ALLISON: That’s great. Is that in a play? It would be a great bumper sticker.

CATF: You also write plays for children….

ALLISON: I started out writing for adults, and it wasn’t

until I had written three or four adult plays that I wrote a children’s play. Children’s plays are much harder to write than adult plays because you are writ-

ing for a much larger audience. You are writing for the children, then you are also writing for parents, their siblings, their grandparents, the teachers — all the gatekeepers.

There is also much more judgment. With an adult play, I can write that vaguely metaphor-ical monologue that you don’t really know what it’s about, but it’s got a cool tone and mood and some great ten-dollar words in it. I cannot do that in a children’s play. I have to stay on story. If I go off story, I will hear immediately from my audience. They will squirm or talk or stand or say out loud their opinion, whereas an adult audience is better trained. They will just sit quietly and go to sleep.

CATF: The playwright Lanford Wilson once said, “No-

body’s safe around a writer.” Are you safe to be around?

ALLISON: You just made me wince because that’s so true. Ask my family.

Chisa Hutchinson The Wedding Gift

CATF: What distinguishes CATF from other theater

CATF: Audiences are going to be challenged by “The

ALLISON: Yes…what are your children’s names?

Wedding Gift” for several reasons. One, it features full-frontal nudity. Two, the actors speak in a language you created, often without the benefit of a translator for about 30–40 percent of the play. That being said, the audience is facing an even deeper, more profound challenge. How would you describe that challenge?

CHISA HUTCHINSON: The intention behind the language is to disorient the audience so it experiences a world that parallels the main male character — Doug.

Doug is human, but he’s treated like an animal, a pet, a male concubine, eunuch…he’s basically a slave. The challenge of the play is to be able to identify with the slave; to forge an empathetic connection with Doug.

CATF: Maria Irene Fornes said, “We can only do what

CATF: You say this play is about what it means to be

groups/festivals?

ALLISON: It starts with Ed and his relentless energy, tireless vision, stubbornness, and excitement about what theater can be. CATF plays are so daunting. This festival is fearless. It is challenging, but there is also a deep humanity there. That is what CATF does so well.

CATF: Is there a question you wish an interviewer

would ask you?

ALLISON: Honestly, I don’t know of a question.

CATF: Is there a question you would refuse to answer?

is possible for us to do. But still it is good to know what the impossible is.” What’s the impossible for you?

ALLISON: To not write. A while back, I was feeling very down and frustrated. I was so depressed about what wasn’t happening in my career, I thought, “Okay, I’m just going to stop writing because it’s making me unhappy.” Then I thought about what would make me less unhappy: writing and not having my plays done or just not writing? And I realized that I would be much more unhappy if I wasn’t writing than if I was writing and my plays weren’t getting done. It was a good place to come to: I just better write.

“the other.” It’s just not blacks among whites or whites among blacks, but also gays among straights, transgendered among males and females…even sick people around healthy people. We all have to learn to speak a language that others don’t always understand. You would know that, of course, because of your multiple sclerosis.

CHISA: Absolutely, and I hope that audiences will be able to fill in the blanks for themselves, i.e., “This is the thing that makes me ‘the other.’ ” CATF: Are you concerned that some in the audience

won’t get the heart of this message — empathy for u fluent | 23

the slave or “the other” because of the nudity? Won’t some walk out of the theater saying, “Doug was naked,” instead of “I care for Doug?”

CHISA: Doug is not naked during the entire play. It may become a little distracting, but in one scene it is totally necessary for Doug to be naked. I never use nudity in a gratuitous way. Like with “Dead and Breathing” two years ago at CATF, it’s all about the vulnerability of that character in that moment, that sense of exposure, that helplessness. Having someone naked standing in front of you is totally different from seeing someone totally naked on screen. You are forced to think about the choice the writer made. You have to grapple with it emotionally.

CATF: Two years ago you said that you “wrote plays to

make myself and others like me more visible.”

CHISA: When I wrote “The Wedding Gift,” I had in mind all these movies and plays that depict slavery in a hyper-literal way, i.e., “This is EXACTLY what it was like! Here are the scars and here is the blood…look at it!” That’s one way to come at it. But, ironically, I feel like it’s desensitizing and distancing. It makes it very safe for folks to respond, “Oh look how horribly they were treated so, so long ago. Isn’t it great that we don’t do that anymore?”

Black people are still chained today. Look at all the police brutality. I recently wrote a short play that was intended to be a reading of the names of women fatally brutalized by police, or women who had mysteriously died in police custody. After extensive research, the list turned out to be all women of color.

I thought, “Wow, that’s telling. You cannot be in your skin without being targeted. Your skin makes you a bulls-eye; a magnet for that kind of violence.” It’s really hard to be confronted with the fact that my own skin is a prison.

CATF: At one point in the play, Doug says, “You con-

sider me an animal, something less than you, but I’m supposed to trust you with my life?”

CHISA: I’ve definitely been in that position, maybe not with the police, but definitely with doctors. Recently, I had a horrible reaction to some MS medication. I had palpitations and trouble breathing and was drifting in and out of consciousness because I couldn’t get oxygen. My face went numb, my hands went numb….

24 | fluent

I actually had to be carried into the ER. The nurse in the emergency room said out loud — she probably thought I couldn’t hear her — “Ehhck…drama queen junkies.” I wanted to say, “Hey, I can hear you.” This person was supposed to be saving my life, but was making a quick judgment about whether or not my life was worth saving. You trust your doctors, you trust police officers, you trust firemen, you trust teachers —these positions come with inherent trustworthiness. When you see someone you’re supposed to trust thinking, “that doesn’t apply to me,” it’s sobering, it’s discouraging, to put it kindly. It’s infuriating.

That’s where the character Doug is in my play.

He’s confronted with this reality, “I’m really helpless here. I have no power here.”

CATF: So “The Wedding Gift” is also about power and

the fact that none of us can really control anything?

CHISA: For Doug and for a lot of us, especially brown

folks, it would be enough just to be in control of our own bodies; to not have our bodies policed or tampered with. It would just be enough to be in control of our own personal situations, to have some agency, if nothing else. I don’t need power. I just need the freedom to be me.

CATF: Let’s talk about the vocabulary of this play.

Does your made-up language have a name, like English, Spanish, French?

CHISA: No, it doesn’t.

CATF: Did you begin with phonetics — what the words

sounded like?

CHISA: I did. I had every intention of making the language just gibberish, but I’m a word nerd, man, and really geeked out. Then I thought if I’m not going to provide subtitles or translations, there has got to be some recognizable words. You have to know the word, shimseh. You have to know that that’s Doug; that’s his position in the world, what they consider him, the pet.

There are other words that people will recognize.

CATF: Let’s look at the personal pronouns: I, you, we,

they, she, he, it. In your made-up language they translate to Esh, Tesh, Kesh, Desh, Sesh, Besh, Vesh. How did you assign the consonant at the beginning for each one of those?

CHISA: Desh just sounds like “they” to me. Sesh is

very feminine so I assigned it to “she.” The “b” in Besh sounded very aggressive so I assigned it to “he.”

Then I kind of ran out of consonants that made sense.

People who are multilingual have read the play and have asked me if I studied some language that I absolutely never studied. Or they tell me that the language is constructed just like German. Aren’t languages all pretty much constructed the same way?

They all have those pronouns, for example.

CATF: Toni Morrison has said, “We die. That may be

the meaning of our lives. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”

CHISA: It’s certainly true for writers. I’m writing play number 14 or 15, so I definitely feel like I’m measuring my life out in language.

CATF: You have said that you “see theater not only as a

profession, but a priority, period.” Why a priority?

CHISA: Theater is a great way to teach a lesson or to

foster empathetic connections that make it easier for all of us to survive and be happy. The quickest way to do that is live narrative. Theater can do things that engineering can’t do, that medicine can’t do….

CATF: That poetry can’t do?

CHISA: Yes, in a way. Not to bash the genre, but poetry

is definitely for lovers of words.

CATF: And theater is for lovers of….

CHISA: Story. Film and television are pretty close

seconds, but again, there’s nothing like having a live shaman in front of you presenting some truth about life and how to live it or how not to live it. It’s more visceral. I’m constantly surprised by theater and it’s capacity to speak to specific, individual situations.

That’s why I will never get tired of playwriting.

CATF: I recently watched a short video of you talking

about fragility. In it, you say, “Me and fragility — we cool. It gives us the opportunity to be our most creative, innovative, resourceful selves. As long as u

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we acknowledge and embrace that we are fragile, we give ourselves the power to do amazing things.”

CHISA: It’s said that “necessity is the mother of all invention,” but necessity springs out of a place of fragility and vulnerability. We don’t like feeling like we can’t do things. We will do whatever it takes to not feel fragile, to not feel weak. We will do anything to give us an advantage. If people didn’t have diseases like MS, they wouldn’t be compelled to exercise whatever muscle it is that helps us to create; that drives doctors and researchers to come up with a solution to MS. CATF: Jung said, “There’s no coming to life without

pain.”

CHISA: YES! THAT! EXACTLY THAT! If you just

felt perfectly fine all the time, where’s your motivation to do anything? Where’s your passion? Where’s that thing you live for? There wouldn’t be anything if we weren’t dissatisfied with ourselves about something; if we weren’t unsettled by our own fragility.

CATF: What distinguishes CATF from other theater

groups and festivals?

CHISA: My experience with CATF with my play “Dead and Breathing” two years ago is my absolute favorite production experience so far. It’s the fearlessness, the devotion…more than just the financial resources. The people who work at CATF are just so determined to make sure that the production is true to the playwright’s vision. And they work tirelessly. The results are always beautiful.

CATF: Is there a question you wish an interviewer

would ask you?

CHISA: Not really. I like going along for the ride. The

interviewer is driving and you just respond.

CATF: Is there a question you would refuse to answer?

CHISA: I haven’t encountered one yet. I’m a pretty

open book.

CATF: Maria Irene Fornes said, “We can only do what

is possible for us to do. But still it is good to know what the impossible is.” What’s the impossible for you?

CHISA: Considering where this country is, I would say trying to convince someone who is voting for Trump to not vote for him. Some people’s minds will never 26 | fluent

change no matter how many plays you write. I realize this when I read comments related to Trump or Black Lives Matter. You fight the good fight. You try to be rational and present a different perspective, but some people’s minds won’t be changed, period. That’s sad, but that won’t stop me from trying.

Susan Miller 20th Century Blues CATF: After reading “20th Century Blues,” I wondered

if you planted a tape recorder in my living room the day before I had three friends over, and surreptitiously recorded our conversation?

SUSAN MILLER: I have tape recorders planted in every living room of every woman and every person. Actually, I wasn’t there, but I’m so glad you think I was.

CATF: Did the idea for this play come from a conversa-

tion you had with friends?

SUSAN: No. While my friends can certainly relate to it, it’s not based on any specific conversation or people that I know. I really wanted to create characters that were very specific who, at the same time, spoke to many, many people.

I wanted to write about women, time and age.

What I first needed to do was find a world in which those things would be just part of it, but they wouldn’t be the story.

CATF: “20th Century Blues” is a comedy about the

blues. How does that work?

SUSAN: The characters in this play have spent most of their lives in the 20th century. It was also a time in which so many major things happened — history was made — and in the play, the characters are wondering: Does history now ever get made?

CATF: In an essay on comedy and tragedy, Samuel Tay-

lor Coleridge wrote that comedy was “more usable and more relevant to the human condition than tragedy.”

What do you think of that?

SUSAN: Comedy in the sense I’m reading it and in the history of theater is more telling about the human condition. It is more revealing because tragedy is inescapable. I look at it in the larger picture of the world.

I opened the paper today and I see an earthquake — a

I say, “That’s what I did on the night before I went to the hospital — I danced.”

As the author and performer, I want everyone to know that whatever happens in this play — or whatever happens in “20th Century Blues” — you can laugh. And after all the laughing, if I’ve done it right, if I’ve set the tone, then when I dip down into something or stop the action, you will know that it’s okay to cry or be moved. Stop. Take a breath.

CATF: Mac, a character in the play, says, “I don’t know

how to be an old woman.” Does anyone know how to be an old woman?

SUSAN: Aside from problems related to specific situations, these characters, these women are getting older.

natural tragedy. Then read on…the tragedy of people who live in poverty, the tragedy of families who’ve lost loved ones in a war. Within that, are the individual human stories which have to balance against that — and there you can find some humor. I’m not sure that makes comedy more “usable,” though.

CATF: Let me put it the way Joni Mitchell might say it:

In her song “People’s Parties” from her album, “Court and Spark,” she sings, “Laughin’, cryin’/you know it’s the same release.” Is it?

SUSAN: I think it comes from the same place…an absolutely natural unforced true emotion that provokes either. It’s honest and you can’t avoid it. When you go to that place, it is really authentic. Humor, first of all, is accessible….Now, from instinct, I want people to enter my work — this play in particular, but all of my work — in a way that allows them to live within it and take the ups and downs that the play provides.

Once they are able to laugh, once they are able to think, “Oh, I recognize that in that person”…if laughter and tears both come from this absolutely distinctive place where you fabricate them…and if I provide something to laugh about at first, then I feel like we have a genuine trip that we’re going to take together.

When people saw the title and description of my play, “My Left Breast,” they probably thought, “Oh my god, this is about breast cancer” (of course, it’s about more than that). The first thing I do in that play (or whoever is performing it) is to come out dancing to rock-and-roll music. Then I stop, the music stops and

“When people get older and reach a certain point in life, they can be dismissed, neglected, or diminished because of pre-conceived notions. I do think that society is addressing this more now because boomers are very outspoken and will not go gently into that dark night.” ­—Susan Miller How do you do that? Because suddenly you’re in a category. I think we do that all of our lives. Danny (another character in the play) responds to Mac: “Do you think a twenty-year-old knows how to be twenty?” Older people have been to the younger place already. Younger people haven’t been to the older place. It’s a conversation.

CATF: At the end of the play, Danny asks, “Are we really

willing to sacrifice a generation each time it grows old?”

SUSAN: When people get older and reach a certain point in life, they can be dismissed, neglected, or diminished because of pre-conceived notions. I do u fluent | 27

think that society is addressing this more now because boomers are very outspoken and will not go gently into that dark night.

CATF: The “forgotten word” in your play is the word

“precarious.” Why? SUSAN: I wanted the forgotten word to open a window. When the characters were younger selfstarters or artists, they were in a precarious position because artists always are. Your work may or may not be recognized. If you go to veterinarian school (as the character Gabby does) and become a vet, you can work until you can’t work anymore. You have that skill. Then there’s the character Mac, who rises up the ranks of the newspaper world. Who would have ever predicted this current, wild, wild media world would run into so much difficulty? That makes those characters very different.

Age plays a part for these characters, but not for all of them. They each have their own individual struggles and their own individual way of being in the world that may have nothing to do with age except that big question, “How long will I be in the world?”

CATF: In an exchange between Mac and Danny, Mac

says, “I don’t want anyone to look at me and think I’ve appropriated real suffering.” Danny responds with this challenging statement, “Because the only valid representation of the human condition is in the cruelest of situations.” How can we nurture more patience and empathy for everyday brokenness?

SUSAN: Danny has dealt with issues such as, “Is it worthy of me to take pictures of people in a community theater green room as opposed to being a war photographer?” She’s come to a point of thinking that depicting human beings in any situation is valid and eye opening.

If you let people look at your face and see what’s really there, that’s generous. That’s a gift.

CATF: What about this line from the play, “Don’t spend

your life trying to forgive yourself. That’s the biggest load of crap ever disguised as spiritual healing.” Isn’t forgiving yourself Therapy 101?

SUSAN: I love these characters. I get to be able to say things through them. In other plays, I haven’t had quite the fun with characters that I’ve had with the characters in “20th Century Blues.” We can look at

28 | fluent

ourselves over a period of time and think, “Oh my god, we were so hot! We were so pretty! I was so thin!” But we can also think, “Oh my god, the mistakes I made, the things I did!” Someone might respond, “You have to get over that.” These movements toward forgiving yourself, loving yourself — you just get to a point where you don’t want to go there anymore. You make mistakes. You don’t have to see them that way. It can be spiritually healing to say, “That’s a load of crap.”

CATF: One of the things you advised young playwrights

was, “to find your voice and be true to that voice.” How do you do that?

SUSAN: For a writer it’s asking, “How do I distinguish myself?” Sometimes people don’t find their voice. In an art form like the theater you actually rely on that other character in the play — the audience — to let you know if you have your voice. There’s no formula. It’s a very cool thing when people say, “Of course, that’s a Susan Miller line,” even though my plays are all different and populated by different characters.

If you write something and you feel satisfied yourself — not because it’s perfect but because you simply like it — say that: “I like it.” That’s pretty cool.

CATF: Do you have any 21st century blues?

SUSAN: I now have a grown son, so I’d say that I have

21st century worries. The blues are now more personal, the worries are more global. I don’t really know. I think the century is too new. My biggest blues are a deep, deep sorrow that my parents are gone, that certain people have passed — friends, mentors, family members. There’s a navigation that has to happen in the world without them.

CATF: This is a play written by a woman with all women

characters with the exception of Simon. Why is a man [Ed Herendeen] directing it for the first time?

SUSAN: My first instinct was for a woman to produce the play. Then I met Ed. The questions he asked about it, what he saw in it, what he felt from it were very exciting to me. I felt a real connection and understanding from him. He didn’t try to sell me on his directing it. He just asked questions, and based on this I decided the play needed to be in the hands of this great person.

CATF: Is there a question you wish an interviewer would

ask you?

SUSAN: Why, in the world of Snapchat, Twitter, the

ability to make art on an iPhone, celebrity-driven casting on and off Broadway, the restrictive amount of new work a theater can actually produce in one season, reviews that can close you down in a heartbeat —WHY do you write plays? Or are you just a crazy person?

CATF: Is there a question you would refuse to answer?

SUSAN: Yes. Joe Papp, who was producing one of my

plays for the Public Theater, taught me (or tried to teach me) not to do interviews before an opening….

I don’t know if I’ve ever been in a situation where I would refuse to answer a question, but I probably would refuse to answer any question that might impinge upon someone else.

CATF: Maria Irene Fornes said, “We can only do what

is possible for us to do. But still it is good to know what the impossible is.” What’s the impossible for you?

SUSAN: For most of the plays that I have written — some more than others — I am most interested in writing the play I don’t think I can pull off.

Ronan Noone The Second Girl CATF: “The Second Girl” has been described by some

critics as, “Downton Abbey meets Eugene O’Neill.”

What do you think of that?

RONAN NOONE: It’s easy to quickly label this as “Downton Abbey” because it is set in the same time, though it is set in a different country and the mores in England are quite different than the mores in New England.

That house — the Monte Christo cottage (also known as Eugene O’Neill’s Summer House) — is a lot smaller than Downton Abbey. The kitchen there no longer exists and when it did, it was very small.

There wasn’t enough room to swing a cat. Also, the characters in this very small kitchen probably have more familiarity with their employers than anyone in Downton Abbey had with theirs.

CATF: You have said, “My personal experience is all

over this play in terms of what it means to come to the New World culturally isolated — and when it becomes your home.” What did it mean for you to come to America culturally isolated in 1994?

RONAN: I thought it might be as simple as getting on

a plane, landing somewhere and starting again. But, of course, it was more complicated. I had to learn to adapt to the American lifestyle while accepting the fact that I had left my home and was beginning to lose touch with my family in terms of what’s tactile — the ability to be around them at the kitchen table at a regular Sunday dinner.

CATF: When did America become your home and how

did you know it had become your home?

RONAN: You begin to accept it five years into being an immigrant. I went back two or three times and each time I went back, what once had been familiar to me became a little more unfamiliar. When I returned, the America that had once been unfamiliar was now something I relied on in terms of comfort and stability.

CATF: You once said, “A playwright goes back whence

he came.”

RONAN: As a playwright, you do mine your own life story in terms of how it’s going to inform the narrative.

But I’ve always considered anything I’ve written as a purgation of the spirit, a way for me metaphorically u fluent | 29

to explain how I live, how I see the world and how I imagine others might see the world. Hopefully then I see some resonance so others can take something home from the story.

CATF: There are three characters in this play: Bridget, a

displaced person; Cathleen, a dreamer (and the Second Girl); and Jack, a realist who you describe as “certainly aware of how fragile we are and how finite we are.”

How do you obtain that kind of awareness?

RONAN: Jack’s over 40. When I turned 40, I started to be aware of my own mortality. Jack’s also had tragedy in this life, up close and personal, and he has regrets because of that. All of those things inform how time passes and how we begin to look at time.

CATF: You’ve said, “When something bothers me I

have to write about it.” What was bothering you that you had to write “The Second Girl?”

RONAN: I certainly understood after about 20 years in America that I had a particular guilt about having left behind my family and culture. So I had to answer that, but I didn’t want to reconcile it with Catholic guilt or any other kind of guilt.

I wanted to reconcile it with myself, to understand why I made that choice and why it was the right choice.

That was part of the reason I needed to write the play.

I also needed to write the play to show that I understood that America offered me a lot of opportunities.

The mantra I attacked the play with was an old Yeats’ phrase, “The joy is in the struggle.”

CATF: Why is the joy in the struggle?

RONAN: When Beckett was asked by a young writer

about the best way to go about writing, he turned to the writer and said, “Despair young and never look back.” You can make a choice between Beckett or Yeats.

You can think the joy is in the struggle or despair young and never look back. I chose joy is in the struggle.

I also find that oftentimes coming from an Irish background, you can find the despair quicker than you can find the joy. For me — and I’m not saying this for everybody — America is a place where I can find the joy easier than I can find the despair.

CATF: You have said, “A storyteller wants to explain the

ineffable….I want to create something that gives you

30 | fluent

a feeling; that helps you make sense of the world, that puts shape on the ineffable, that is relevant, that lives beyond me — that is part of my definition of success.”

What do you see as the ineffable?

RONAN: I can’t answer that because it’s ineffable. The ineffable is when you walk away from watching a dance; when you walk away recognizing that something has occurred inside of you emotionally and you don’t have the vocabulary to explain it. You walk away not knowing why you are crying. I would like that to happen in the work that I do. I look for the moment when an audience is connected emotionally and doesn’t understand why there may be tears rolling down their faces or smiles.

CATF: You have quoted John Berryman, “We must travel

in the direction of our fear.” What direction are you traveling in now?

RONAN: Sometimes I’m not aware that I’m traveling in the direction of my fear, but when I do become aware of it, and I recognize that I may be walking away from it, I change my perception and seize the challenge and consider going toward the fear. I think it’s a very brave thing to do. The thing that all writers become most proud of — even if they are never published — is facing the things that we fear.

CATF: You have said, “A piece of music can define the

tone of a play” — What piece of music would define “The Second Girl”?

RONAN: When I was writing it, I had to listen to a particular piece of music. The name of the album was “Divenire” by Ludovico Einaudi. Perhaps it doesn’t really capture, “The Second Girl,” but I had it on in the background as I was writing.

CATF: You say that writing a play requires so much

“emotional heft” that you’re completely exhausted but still need to put pen to paper.

RONAN: I spend more time thinking about the next play I’m going to write than I do writing it. The first draft will come out in about 10 days, but I probably spend about a year and a half thinking about it: the characters, the structure, the best opening line. Between family and teaching, my life is busy and I have to find a window when I can’t be disturbed, so I need to have everything in place before I attack the page.

RONAN: I wrote an introduction to “The Second Girl,”

“I look for the moment when an audience is connected emotionally and doesn’t understand why there may be tears rolling down their faces or smiles.”

—Ronan Noone

CATF: What’s the best opening line of a play you’ve

ever heard?

RONAN: It’s from the first play I ever saw, and because of that it had a profound effect on me. It’s a play called, “Conversations on a Homecoming,” by Tom Murphy — a well-known playwright in Ireland. It takes place in a bar and is similar to “The Iceman Cometh.”

The year was 1985 and the town hall was packed — probably 300 people, including the Canon of the town.

In 1985, Ireland was a very theocratic society and most everybody was emotionally restrained. A bar had been built on the stage, and the play opened with a character walking up to a customer at the bar and saying, “Howya Bolix!” That may not be the exact opening line, but that’s how I remember it, which may be even better. For the Irish, this opening line is a slander. But that line set the tone for everybody in that audience to say, “We’re going to see something that we recognize in all of our bars, but we would never say if a priest was present.” Needless to say, the Canon walked out of the town hall as soon as he heard the line.

At 15 years old, that influenced me to say, “Oh, you can put anything you like on the stage.” It was like sinning without committing a sin. You were able to actually wallow and enjoy the irreverent nature of the stage — the way it represented life. In life we put on a lot of masks, whereas the stage unmasks the hypocrisy.

I found that fascinating.

CATF: Any comment on how the topic of immigration

has become a major talking point in the 2016 presidential election?

which the Eugene O’Neill Review will publish in the fall along with the entire play. At the end of the introduction, I mention that I don’t think we can look at “The Second Girl” without looking at the sacrifices that the characters Bridget, Cathleen and Jack have made. On the backs of our ancestors — those who crossed the Atlantic in cargo ships and those who went to Ellis Island with one suitcase and those who ride on top of freight trains in Mexico on their way to America hoping to make a fresh start — the sacrifices of immigrants like this built the America I see today.

I know that it can be controversial — how you look at America — but I still see America as a place that gave me a lifeguard. If I were drowning, America would save me.

CATF: What distinguishes CATF from other theater

groups/festivals?

RONAN: It takes on a play and gives it a second life.

Also, the festival is done in repertory — acting in two different plays over a month — which is fantastic.

There’s something old school about it, but at the same time, something now, today. It actually feels seminal.

CATF: Is there a question you wish an interviewer would

ask you?

RONAN: I don’t think so.

CATF: Is there a question you would refuse to answer?

RONAN: I’m sure there is, but I don’t know what it is.

CATF: Maria Irene Fornes said, “We can only do what is

possible for us to do. But still it is good to know what the impossible is.” What’s the impossible for you?

RONAN: It’s impossible for me to become the President of America because I wasn’t born here, but I still like the idea of the challenge.

It seems impossible to me to write an epic play, which I want to do in a few years. That’s the impossible I want to work toward — an epic, grand, “Angels in America”type piece. More than that, something like, “The Iceman Cometh” or “Death of a Salesman” — something epic that leaves you, even if it’s sad, wallowing in the ambition of it. And always, of course, pointing you toward the ineffable. fluent CATF runs through July 31. See the schedule on p 32 for details. fluent | 31

thinktheater Season 26: July 8-31

contemporaryamericantheaterfestival AT S H E P H E R D U N I V E R S I T Y

PAY-WHAT-YOU-CAN

WEEK ONE

PREVIEWS: JULY 3-7

!

VENUE TIMES HAVE CHANGED! THE PLAYS ARE NEW AND TIMES ARE TOO! DOUBLE CHECK YOUR SCHEDULE.

** OPENING NIGHT ^ FOLLOWED BY A POST-SHOW DISCUSSION

pen/man/ship

BY CHRISTINA ANDERSON MARINOFF THEATER | CCA II | 62 WEST CAMPUS DRIVE RUN TIME: 120 MINUTES

pen/man/ship

FRI 7/8

SAT 7/9

SUN 7/10

10:00 am

CONTEXT

BREAKFAST

12:00 pm

NOT MEDEA

NOT MEDEA

SUN, 7/3 7PM • WED, 7/6 8PM

12:30 pm

20TH CENTURY BLUES

2:00 pm

PEN/MAN/SHIP

SECOND GIRL

NOT MEDEA

2:30 pm

BLUES

WEDDING GIFT

4:30 pm

LECTURE

NOT MEDEA

NOT MEDEA

PEN/MAN/SHIP

SUN, 7/3 7:30PM • WED, 7/6 8:30PM TUE, 7/5 6PM • WED, 7/6 6PM • THUR, 7/7 6PM

THE SECOND GIRL

TUE, 7/5 8PM • THUR 7/7 8PM

6:00 pm

THE WEDDING GIFT

6:30 pm

TUE, 7/5 8:30PM • THUR, 7/7 8:30PM BOX OFFICE OPENS ONE HOUR PRIOR TO CURTAIN AT EACH VENUE. FIRST COME, FIRST SERVE.

8:00 pm

LUNCH & ART

NOT MEDEA**

BLUES PEN/MAN/SHIP** SECOND GIRL**

8:30 pm

BLUES**

THUR 7/14

FRI 7/15

WEDDING GIFT**

NOT MEDEA

BY ALLISON GREGORY

SAT 7/16

SUN 7/17

STUDIO 112 | CCA I | 92 WEST CAMPUS DRIVE RUN TIME: 90 MINUTES

WEEK TWO 10:00 am

TUES 7/12

WED 7/13

BREAKFAST

CONTEXT

BREAKFAST

THE WEDDING GIFT

12:00 pm

NOT MEDEA

NOT MEDEA

NOT MEDEA

BY CHISA HUTCHINSON

12:30 pm

LUNCH & ART

LUNCH & ART

FRANK CENTER STAGE | 260 UNIVERSITY DRIVE RUN TIME: 90 MINUTES

2:00 pm

SECOND GIRL

PEN/MAN/SHIP

FRIDAY FILM

SECOND GIRL

PEN/MAN/SHIP

20TH CENTURY BLUES

2:30 pm

WEDDING GIFT

BLUES

WEDDING GIFT

BLUES

NOT MEDEA

NOT MEDEA

BY SUSAN MILLER

4:30 pm

FRANK CENTER STAGE | 260 UNIVERSITY DRIVE RUN TIME: 120 MINUTES

6:00 pm

THE SECOND GIRL

6:30 pm

BY RONAN NOONE

8:00 pm

SECOND GIRL^

PEN/MAN/SHIP^

SECOND GIRL

PEN/MAN/SHIP

MARINOFF THEATER | CCA II | 62 WEST CAMPUS DRIVE RUN TIME: 120 MINUTES

8:30 pm

WEDDING GIFT

BLUES

WEDDING GIFT

BLUES

BREAKFAST WITH ED

10:30 pm

10:00AM | CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ARTS II ROOM G03 | 62 WEST CAMPUS DRIVE

LECTURE

NOT MEDEA

NOT MEDEA

SECOND GIRL WEDDING GIFT

SALON SAT 7/23

SUN 7/24

LUNCH & ART

10:00 am

BREAKFAST

CONTEXT

BREAKFAST

12:30PM | CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ARTS II ROOM G03 | 62 WEST CAMPUS DRIVE

12:00 pm

NOT MEDEA

NOT MEDEA

NOT MEDEA

PEN/MAN/SHIP

SECOND GIRL

BLUES

WEDDING GIFT

FRIDAY FILM 2:00PM | OLD OPERA HOUSE 131 WEST GERMAN STREET

WEEK THREE

NOT MEDEA

TUES 7/19

WED 7/20

2:00 pm

PEN/MAN/SHIP

2:30 pm

BLUES

4:30 pm

CATF IN CONTEXT

6:00 pm

A SCHOLARLY APPROACH TO THE CATF REPERTORY. FREE BUT REQUIRES RESERVATION.

6:30 pm

ROOM G03 | CCA II | 62 WEST CAMPUS DRIVE

8:00 pm

SECOND GIRL

LECTURE

8:30 pm

WEDDING GIFT^

DISTINGUISHED GUEST SPEAKERS DISCUSS ISSUES RAISED IN THE PLAYS AT THE POPULAR talktheater LECTURE SERIES.

10:30 pm

READING JOIN CATF FOR STAGE READINGS OF NEW PLAYS. MARINOFF THEATER | CCA II | 62 W CAMPUS DRIVE

WEEK FOUR

NOT MEDEA^

NOT MEDEA

PEN/MAN/SHIP PEN/MAN/SHIP BLUES^

BLUES

TUES 7/26

WED 7/27

THUR 7/28

FRI 7/29

10:00 am 12:00 pm

NOT MEDEA

NOT MEDEA PEN/MAN/SHIP

SECOND GIRL WEDDING GIFT

SAT 7/30

SUN 7/31

CONTEXT

BREAKFAST

NOT MEDEA

NOT MEDEA

SECOND GIRL

PEN/MAN/SHIP

WEDDING GIFT

BLUES

LUNCH & ART

12:30 pm

ENJOY A LATE-NIGHT DRINK, LITE FARE, AND DISCUSSION WITH CATF STAFF.

2:30 pm

WEDDING GIFT

PEN/MAN/SHIP

FRIDAY FILM

4:30 pm 6:00 pm 6:30 pm

LECTURE NOT MEDEA

SALON

SECOND GIRL

catf.org

NOT MEDEA

FRIDAY FILM

BLUES

2:00 pm

800.999.CATF

SECOND GIRL

READING

SALON domestic | 117 EAST GERMAN STREET

FRI 7/22

LUNCH & ART

12:30 pm

PRESENTED FREE OF CHARGE:

REYNOLDS HALL | 109 NORTH KING STREET

THUR 7/21

NOT MEDEA

NOT MEDEA

NOT MEDEA

LECTURE

NOT MEDEA

NOT MEDEA

SECOND GIRL

READING

WEDDING GIFT

8:00 pm

PEN/MAN/SHIP

SECOND GIRL

SECOND GIRL

PEN/MAN/SHIP

8:30 pm

BLUES

WEDDING GIFT

WEDDING GIFT

BLUES

10:30 pm

SALON

fluent | 32