SPECIAL CATF EDITION
Summer 2015 | Vol 4 No 1
CATF: SEASON 25 The Plays Peggy McKowen and the Art of Costuming Five Playwrights, Five Voices: Interviews by Sharon J. Anderson The Schedule
“Curtain Call” by Judy Olsen
CATF:
25 SEASON
Victor is a ruthless 1970s fashion designer and a devotee of the “beauty-is-pain” aesthetic. Esme, his glamorous lover and muse, is pushed aside when an ordinary Midwestern woman, Louella, inspires Victor to make his artistry accessible to the masses. A generation later, Jess, a self- loathing woman, wrestles her own family demons to find her way through the world of fashion that will not give her a second look. Flashing back and forth in time, “Everything You Touch” is a fierce, lushly written dark comedy that exposes the struggle to find an identity that is more than skin deep. by sheila callaghan
Text and images courtesy of CATF. 2 | fluent
At an abandoned motel on a desolate American road, a distraught mother waits). Having hired an experienced but cruel private investigator, she believes she will be reunited with her runaway daughter. What happens instead—in this smart, harrowing, edge-of-your-seat thriller—is something that will shock her to the core. How far can you push the bonds of family? And how far will you go to bring them back? by steven dietz
Max and Whitney live in their own, imaginary worlds. They are both patients in a clinical trial experimenting with a new drug—a treatment that will cure them of their schizophrenic dreams and flights of fancy—that will make them functioning members of society. As the pills take effect their fantasies fade. And amidst their struggles to preserve their illusions they fall in love. Max and Whitney must choose between a love that is real and the worlds that they have built. by johnna adams
Dr. Jeremy Cook has a problem. While he is a linguist (of moderate renown), he is also unemployed, broke, and haunted by the words of an old friend who says that basically, ‘his timing sucks majorly.’ In desperation, Cook accepts an offer from the enigmatic Roy Pillow to serve as part of a research experiment, living with a married couple as their relationship counselor. However, Cook’s lack of: a) experience b) understanding of love c) history of successful relationships d) common sense and e) instinct—guides this couple from a dysfunctional marriage toward the hilarious “full catastrophe.” by michael weller
In February 2012, five young women walked into the Church of Christ the Savior in the center of Moscow and offered up a punk prayer to the Mother of God—“Virgin Mary, Chase Putin Away!” The young activists, who call themselves Pussy Riot, played and shouted for exactly 48 seconds before being dragged out of the church by security guards and sent home. That night they uploaded a video of their performance to YouTube, and within hours became enemies of both Church and State. The girls were arrested, tried, and sent to labor camps for hooliganism and inciting religious hatred. But unlike dissidents from Soviet times, the Western media machine took hold of the story and turned Pussy Riot into the greatest piece of performance art in Russian history. This is their story. by barbara hammond fluent | 3
Peggy McKowen and the Art of Costuming
by sheila kelly vertino | photographs by judy olsen
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skirt in catf’s 2013 production of “Scott and Hem in the Garden of Allah,” which McKowen designed. In McKowen’s hands, the choice of fabric is almost limitless. She is known for her use of unusual materials, once designing a suit of armor out of bamboo because she liked the way the vertical lines of the wood
Costume designers imply a character’s strength by using vertical lines, like those in Scott’s (actor Joey Collins’) trousers. The curvy, figure-hugging lines of Ms. Montaigne’s (actor Angela Pierce’s) skirt and sweater clearly send a sensual message. Costume designs by Peggy McKowen, “Scott and Hem in the Garden of Allah,” CATF 2013 Season. Photo by Seth Freeman
eeper and deeper she goes with each reading. Might take 10 or even 20 times reading a play before Peggy McKowen, Associate Producing Director for catf, feels that she intimately understands all of the characters and the time and place in which they exist. In her role as costume designer, McKowen uses “the elements of design and evocative qualities to create something about the character in the story.” A well-designed costume allows the actors to portray their characters authentically, both emotionally and physically. To fully understand and capture the era a play is set in, McKowen performs weeks of research, both online and print. “I’m looking for images of real people, in the real environment. For example, ‘computer workers in an actual office back in the 1970s.’ ” Soon her sketches start to flow, eventually revealing a costume board for each character. She uses line to communicate: Should a costume fit closely or loosely, be smooth and flowing, sharp and jagged, or perhaps exaggerate the body in some way? Horizontal lines can give a sense of passivity, McKowen explains, while vertical lines come across as strong. And curvy lines? Well, to understand just how sensual those lines can be, think back to Ms. Montaigne’s figure-hugging
communicated strength. And although McKowen is known for her ability to draw complex, subtle moods from neutral color palettes, she once designed a production of “Mother Courage” all in tones of red! For the 2015 catf Season, McKowen is designing the costumes for “Everything You Touch,” a dark comedy by Sheila Callaghan. Set in the fashion industry of the 1970s, the play follows Victor, a ruthless fashion designer; Esme, his glamorous lover and muse; and Louella, a Midwestern outsider. The story shifts back and forth in time and follows the journey of Jess as she travels through the world of fashion. McKowen has decided to clothe the play’s “real” characters in color “to communicate their reality” and the fashion models in neutrals “to communicate their other-worldliness,” she notes. The models’ outfits will be runway-bizarre, 1970’s style. McKowen plans to build one of the skirts with a train made of plastic ring carriers, in keeping with the character Victor’s esthetic. “He kind of gathered trash and created elegant, beautiful stuff,” she says. “This has to be a very, very long train that this model wraps herself in. Once we figure out how to do it, we are going to ask for volunteers u
Above right, for a “runway bizarre” look in this season’s “Everything You Touch,” McKowen is combining non-traditional materials with fabrics, creating costumes out of plastics and other throw-away items. fluent | 5
to come in and sit. It’s going to take days to put together!” For other costumes, “I’m going to have to sculpt them on [the actors’] bodies. I’ll figure out by draping it to see how it moves, and then make alterations.” For costumes as unusual as this, McKowen will also In the CATF costume shop, a team works non-stop, creating costumes for all five plays. Pictured clockwise from top right: Lena, David, Jason, Stephanie. Not shown: Birdie, Lydia. Dressers Katharine, Tess and Jenny will join the team at rehearsals.
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have to coach the actors in how to wear them and become comfortable moving on the stage. Channeling the fashion industry in the 1970s excites McKowen. “What I like best is when I can take a period and sort of mix it with other things. Eve Adamson, one of McKowen’s artistic mentors, used to say, “I want it to look ‘Then and Now.’ ”
Fringe made from magazine pages will create a unique costume detail.
“That’s challenging, and sort of fun. I like to mix things up. I’m not very excited when I’m stuck in a period. Even in Scott and Hem, I tried to be as honest with the period as I could be, but I still took some liberties here and there,” McKowen admits with a sly smile. The final challenge of the costume design phase is knowing when to stop. McKowen takes her cue from another mentor, Dr. Paul Rhinehardt, former professor from the University of Texas, who encouraged her to cultivate a more minimalist style — to design using the fewest number of items, each deeply rich in meaning.
From Clarity of Concept to Organization For such a complex process, it is perhaps surprising to learn that much of the design process is done longdistance. McKowen and the producer communicate via email, telephone and Google Hangout. Spreadsheets are created to catalog full costume items for each character, scene by scene. The spreadsheets include information about what each character wears in each scene, how long they have to change between each scene and where on-stage that change needs to happen. Budgets, build lists and construction calendars are also pieces in the vast amount of paperwork.
Build, Buy or Pull After several weeks, the design moves into the build, buy or pull stage. If possible, McKowen will find a perfect item to pull from CATF’s wardrobe closet or borrow from another theater company. But more often than not, to get exactly the right look, items will have to be bought or built, first from a muslin mockup and then custom fitted to the actor. A costume shop of eight people from all over comes to Shepherdstown each summer to build the show and then stay through the season. “I try to get the costume shop supervisor involved as early as I can. It’s going to be up to her to get this show through the shop and ready for dress rehearsal!” And at last, come July, the research, sketches and spreadsheets will have been transformed into costumes, and the worlds created by the designers will come alive in each theater. fluent
To explore the role of costume and set designers, attend catf in Context: catf Designers, a roundtable discussion with the designers behind the many elements of the work seen onstage. Saturday, July 11, 10 am, CCA II Room G03. This is a free event, but you must register for it on the ticket order form. fluent | 7
Mark Muse – Photographs Fine Art Photography and Printmaking •
the new f word arts | culture | events
Portfolio Printing Printing for Exhibition Color and Black&White High Quality Art Reproduction
[\ muse@markmusephotographs.com markmusephotographs.com
The Bridge Fine Art & Framing Gallery
Summer Exhibit, Jul 11–Aug 3: Bruce Fransen, Seth Hill, Jacob Stilley, Ed Praybee, Evan Boggess. Bruce Fransen Gallery Talk, Jul 19, 1–2 pm, with music by Bruce Fransen & Paul Chauvette.
8566 Shepherdstown Pike, Shepherdstown WV 25443 • 304.876.2300 Fine Art, Ceramics, Photography & Custom Framing
2015 World Builders by Johnna Adams • Everything You Touch by Sheila Callaghan • On Clover Road by Steven Dietz • WE ARE PUSSY RIOT by Barbara Hammond The Full Catastrophe by Michael Weller 2014 The Ashes Under Gait City by Christina Anderson • One Night by Charles Fuller • Uncanny Valley by Thomas Gibbons North of the Boulevard by Bruce Graham • Dead and Breathing by Chisa Hutchinson 2013 A Discourse on the Wonders of the Invisbile World by Liz Duffy Adams Modern Terrorism, or They Who Want to Kill Us and How We Learn to Love Them by Jon Kern • H2O by Jane Martin • Heartless by Sam Shepard • Scott and Hem in the Garden of Allah by Mark St. Germain 2012 Gidion’s Knot by Johnna Adams • The Exceptionals by Bob Clyman • In a Forest, Dark and Deep by Neil LaBute • Captors by Evan M. Wiener • Barcelona by Bess Wohl 2011 From Prague by Kyle Bradstreet • Race by David Mamet • Ages of the Moon by Sam Shepard • We Are Here by Tracy Thorne
The Insurgents by Lucy Thurber
2010 Lidless by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig • White People by J.T.
Rogers • The Eelwax Jesus 3-D
Pop Music Show by Max Baker & Lee Sellars • Inana by Michele
Lowe • Breadcrumbs by Jennifer
Haley
Michael Weller • Farragut North by Beau
2009 Yankee Tavern by Steven Dietz • Fifty Words by
Willimon • Dear Sara Jane by Victor Lodato The History of
Light by Eisa Davis 2008 A View
of the Harbor by Richard Dresser • The Overwhelming by J.T.
Rogers • WRECKS by Neil LaBute
Pig Farm by Greg Kotis • Stick Fly by Lydia R. Diamond 2007
1001 by Jason Grote • Lonesome
Hollow by Lee Blessing • The Pursuit of Happiness by Richard
Dresser • My Name is Rachel
Corrie by Rachel Corrie 2006 Sex, Death and the Beach
Baby by Kim
Merrill • Mr.
Marmalade
by Noah Haidle
Jazzland by
Keith Glover
Augusta by
Richard
Dresser
2005 The God
of Hell by Sam
Shepard • Sonia Flew by
Melinda Lopez
American Tet by Lydia
Stryk • Father
Joy by Sheri Wilner
2004 Flag Day
Blessing • Rounding
Third by Richard Dresser
Homeland Security
by Stuart Flack • The Rose of
Corazon by Keith
Glover 2003 Whores by Lee
Blessing • The
Last Schwartz by Deborah
Zoe Laufer
Bright Ideas by Eric Coble
by Lee
Wilder by Erin Cressida Wilson 2002 Thief River by Lee Blessing • Silence of God by Catherine Filloux • The Late Henry Moss by Sam Shepard • Orange Flower Water by Craig Wright 2001 Tape by Stephen Belber • The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa by John Olive • The Occupation by Harry Newman • The Pavilion by Craig Wright
2000 Hunger by Sheri Wilner • Mary and Myra by Catherine Filloux • Miss Golden Dreams, A Play Cycle by Joyce Carol Oates • Something in the Air by Richard Dresser
1999 Compleat Female Stage Beauty by Jeffrey Hatcher • Coyote on a Fence by Bruce Graham • Tatjana in Color by Julia Jordan • The Water Children by
Wendy MacLeod 1998 BAFO by Tom Strelich • Carry the Tiger to the Mountain by Cherylene Lee • Gun-Shy by Richard Dresser • Interesting Times by Preston Foerder
1997 Below the Belt by Richard Dresser • Demonology by Kelly Stuart • Lighting Up the Two Year Old by Benjie Aerenson 1996 Bad Girls by Joyce
Carol Oates • Octopus by Jon Klein • The Nina Variations by Steven Dietz • The Nose by Elizabeth Egloff • Tough Choices for the New Century by Jane Anderson
1995 Betty the Yeti by Jon Klein • Maggie’s Riff by Jon Lipsky • Psyche Was Here by Lynn Martin • Voir Dire by Joe Sutton 1994 Forgiving Typhoid Mary by Mark St. Germain • Shooting Simone by Lynne Kaufman • Spike Heels by Theresa Rebeck • What are Tuesdays Like? by Victor Bumbalo 1993 A Contemporary Masque by Stephen Bennet • Alabama Rain by Heather McCutchen • Black by Joyce Carol Oates • Dream House by Darrah Cloud 1992 Static by Ben Siegler • Still Waters by Lynn Martin • The Baby Dance by Jane Anderson • The Swan by Elizabeth Egloff 1991 Accelerando by Lisa Loomer • Welcome to the Moon by John Patrick Shanley
1 1 0 P L AYS P R O D U C E D / 4 0 W O R L D P R E M I E R E S / 1 0 C O M M I S S I O N S
contemporaryamericantheaterfestival AT SHEPHERD UNIVERSITY
THE 25TH SEASON: JULY 10 – AUGUST 2, 2015 CATF.ORG 800/999-2283
INSIDE CATF: SEASON 25
EVERYTHING YOU TOUCH CATF: In the interest of full disclosure, I don’t know a
thing about fashion. A client once asked me if my shoes were Ferragamos. I replied, “No, they’re mine.” Would you recognize a pair of Ferragamos? SHEILA CALLAGHAN: No. I’m not a fashion maven. I’m pretty ignorant when it comes to labels. I know names, and I kind of stalk people on the Internet who have a fashion fetish. I’m sort of a voyeur of people who appreciate such things, but I am not an active appreciator myself. I don’t own one designer thing.
CATF: The following is from the opening to “Every-
Five Playwrights Five Voices By Sharon J. Anderson
thing You Touch.” Victor, a ruthless fashion designer, is addressing a model: “When the model spits with rage, I want to feel that spittle. I want to smell your sweat. I want to taste your bile. I want my blood to boil. And I want to feel too overwhelmed after the experience to speak. This, to me, is the power of fashion.” Is this the power of fashion? SC: No, it’s the power of art. Throughout the play, Victor sees what he does as a form of expression and a way of coping with a pretty devastating past rather than actually building clothes for people to put on their bodies. The play isn’t really about fashion even though fashion is the vehicle through which the play is communicated. It’s about family and art and what we compromise with one and what we sacrifice with the other. CATF: TimeOut New York said that “Everything You Touch”
has a “contagious nausea about women’s self-hatred.” SC: Through the character of Jess, we are coping with our own self-loathing. Jess’s self-loathing is partially brought about by societal expectations of what makes an acceptable female and partially because of her upbringing at the hands of a fairly toxic parent who was suffering.
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. 10 | fluent
CATF: Your play has been described as “the struggle to
find an identity that is more than skin deep.” Have you found your identify? SC: I find one every day. Part of my job is to inhabit
the psychic space of different individuals in order to accurately communicate them. I feel like if I’m not
because we are more used to seeing it, I think. We find the penis shocking because we still think of it as a weapon. We have the issues of rape in this country. It can be a dangerous thing. It’s easier to objectify a female body because it’s not necessarily associated with violence. CATF: You have said that the theater that most people
“Everything You Touch” playwright Sheila Callaghan
doing that with a whole heart and clear eyes, then I’m not necessarily doing my job right. CATF: Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, said, “The
notion that a contemporary woman must look mannish in order to be taken seriously as a seeker of power is frankly dismaying. This is America, not Saudi Arabia.” SC: That last little bit is a little irritating, but I do think that there’s been a shift in women’s fashion regarding how people view power and femininity. Look at somebody like Hillary Clinton who continues to “masculate” herself because she wants to be either unthreatening or of the same echelon as her male counterparts. That was something in the 80s and 90s for women who wanted positions of power. Nowadays, people like Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo, and other women CEOs wear designer clothes. They tend to bring in their femininity and are not necessarily fearful of being perceived as a threat because in the past, female sexuality and female power have been perceived as threatening. But it’s changing. Mayer is very feminine and has been a very powerful model for women who are also mothers in the workplace. CATF: The designer Tom Ford has said: “I’m an equal
opportunity objectifier. I’m just as happy to objectify men. The thing is, you can’t show male nudity in our culture in the way you can show female nudity. We’re very comfortable as a culture exploiting women, but not men. But I don’t think of it as exploitation either way.” SC: It’s true. On my Showtime show, “Shameless,” we show male and female genitalia. It’s just rarer than breasts. We are more comfortable with female nudity
like, including you, “is this thoughtful, plodding, plot and plod build of character and story, until you’re full of the play.” SC: Oh, I love plays like this, but I also think a lot of people love it to the exclusion of other types of plays. As a theater-going culture, we’re not comfortable with “outside-the-box” storytelling. We’re just not accustomed to seeing it. I like to be comfortable and amazed in a theater, but I also like to be uncomfortable and provoked. There’s less of a tolerance in our culture for that. But the more diverse and different the plays are, the more vibrant the field is. CATF: You’ve said that you “like the feeling of having
the play race out in front of you and you have to catch it.” That you like “speedy, flip-flop theater.” SC: I do, and I like writing it, too. u
CATF: One collaborator said that you have “one foot
in the literary theater and the other in the avant-garde world. It’s really her love of both that makes her work so strong.” SC: It also makes it a challenge. I tend to get mixed reviews. People like to walk out of the theater knowing exactly why they were there, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I prefer spending two hours in a theater being rattled and the next day asking myself, “What were my limitations in receiving the work?” rather than “What were the limitations in the work itself?” A work never exists in one acceptable realm. I like to walk away wondering about what the fuck I just saw and feeling a little angry about it. But sometimes I want to feel like I just ate a giant turkey dinner and all I have to do is just sit there and digest it and it’s gone out of my body the next day. Most mainstream theatergoers want the turkey dinner rather than the aggravation because there’s enough aggravation in people’s lives. CATF: The poet John Ashbery said, “Most reckless
things are beautiful in some way, and recklessness is what makes experimental art beautiful, just as religions are beautiful because of the strong possibilities they are founded on nothing.” SC: To sit down and write art is a reckless impulse. You are trying to capture something unspoken, something completely inarticulate-able; and even when you’ve done it, it’s probably still incomprehensible in some way. There’s that impulse that you can’t necessarily contain with words or song or poetry or visuals, but you keep trying and trying and trying. That struggle is something that continually feels like trying to cope with a life force versus the desire to extinguish oneself to avoid feelings. That is something that feels human versus something that reaffirms what we already believe in the world that can pacify us, which is also valid. Religion is a valid way to cope with pain. CATF: Anne Sexton said, “One can’t build picket
fences to keep nightmares out.” There was a white picket fence around the house in “The United States of Tara” — a show you wrote for…. SC: I think people build white picket fences to keep their hearts protected.
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CATF: Gertrude Stein said, “Is it worse to be scared
than to be bored, that is the question.”
SC: I would 100 percent rather be scared than bored,
but then again you have to be held accountable for what you do when you are scared. There’s an irrationality that comes with a fight or flight response. Boredom allows you a little distance and a soft envelope within which you can make logical and measured choices. CATF: You’ve said, “I’m drawn to anything where
language comes alive. I don’t want language to feel strenuous. I like it to feel kind of magical with juxtapositions you wouldn’t expect popping out. Language works differently in space, much differently than it works on the page.” What do you mean by that? SC: When you are reading poetry, you can have your own perception of it. You can absorb it, you can think about it, you can digest it, masticate it. You can go away from it, go back to it, read it over and over and over again. When you’re in a theater, you really can’t come and go. It’s just you and me. It almost has the effect of fireworks. The words are exploding in your face and then they are gone. I like fireworks.
CATF: You say that you write plays because, “I must.
A yawping, bottomless cavern in my soul compels me thusly” and “because I am waiting for someone to tell me to stop.” SC: I was being cheeky when I said that first part. The second part is what is really true — nobody has told me to stop. I don’t know what else to do. I’ve got all this bottomless shit in my head. I started teaching yoga recently to get out all that extra energy. I write to get out all the trauma. CATF: You recently tweeted, “Please make sure my
tombstone reads, “Brilliant but cancelled.” SC: My impulse is to die before I fizzle. I know that sounds really dark, but maybe the brighter way of looking at that is that I hope I’m never irrelevant. A common art fear is that you stop understanding what makes people interested. I’d rather be brilliant but cancelled than mundane and long running.
CATF: Is there one question I could ask you that you
would never answer? SC: “Do you believe in God?”
CATF: Is there one question you’re dying for someone
to ask you?
SC: “How do you remain so stunning?” CATF: What’s unique about producing a play with the
Contemporary American Theater Festival? SC: We have access to Shepherd University, so we have many more resources at the ready. I’ve never done a show in rep before, so it’s interesting to create this kind of theater community. They’ve also been very generous with approaching artists with whom I might want to work.
CATF: The playright Barbara Hammond ended a piece
she wrote, entitled “How to Stay a New York Playwright,” with this: “Now close your eyes again, envision a stage, and watch someone walk on from stage left. Get that pencil and write down what she says.” My last question to you: Close your eyes, someone is walking on from stage left. What is that person saying? SC: “Oh fuck, wrong door!”
ON CLOVER ROAD “On Clover Road” playwright Steven Dietz. CATF: After I finished reading “On Clover Road,” I
wanted to ask you this question: “Do you like the smell of napalm in the morning?” STEVEN DIETZ: One thing theater can do is truly surprise us; truly shock us in a way that might be unique to this art form and is different from where we’ve come now to expect our shocks: film or TV or, to a lesser extent, the pages of a book from time to time. I have never, until “On Clover Road,” attempted to write a play in a classic single-set, five-character thriller format. It’s really damn hard.
CATF: How would you describe the world of “On
Clover Road?” SD: It’s a dangerous, claustrophobic world and an invented, artificial world in the sense that someone is trapped in a very real place and for very real reasons. By “artificial,” I mean the world that is being invented by the pressures the characters put on each other. In some ways, we’re in a bit of a purgatory that is the status quo, and it is dangerous and full of portent.
Plays like this are built to make members of the audience certain they know what is going to happen and instead something wholly different happens. CATF: How does writing a thriller differ from writing
other types of plays? Are there certain thriller conventions? SD: Stage thrillers that I admire, such as “Wait Until Dark,” “Dial M for Murder,” “Veronica’s Room,” and “Deathtrap,” do have conventions. These conventions create the box, then the box frames the moment in time and in a location, and then it does what time and location do in all of our plays: It puts pressure on the characters.What I attempted to do in “On Clover Road” is give the story certain parameters of a thriller. Once I had a working architecture, I then contrived to write a drama that has the emotional resonance of a woman trying to reunite with her daughter. Along the way, I try to deliver some thrills. u fluent | 13
CATF: Is this the mother’s play or the daughter’s play?
SD: I respectfully will not answer that question. That
answer wouldn’t help me if I were directing the play or revising the play. I would say that it interests me when people share a story but they are in different plays. The mother is in a reunion play. I’ve tried to put the daughter not in a reunion play. The cult deprogrammer has a certain agenda. I don’t want to privilege one character’s agenda over another. CATF: Here’s a quote from the play: “People think
children are made of rubber. That they can bounce back from anything. But children are made of glass. Children shatter.” SD: My two kids — both 15 — are slightly younger than the woman who appears in this play, so certainly some of this is driven by watching, in particular, my daughter come of age. I’m delighted to say that this play has nothing to do with the specifics of her life or mine. However, I know the lengths I would go to protect my daughter if she were in danger — that notion is in this play. Until the moment she was born, I never understood anger. In the past, I would mitigate anger, but as a parent my anger becomes very purposeful when I imagine a child of mine in danger. That anger shows up in “On Clover Road” more as obsession. This is a woman who hasn’t seen her daughter in four years and that thought alone drives her obsession. It may be irrational obsession, but those are the lengths I would go to to get my daughter back. I don’t walk around thinking my kids are rubber and can bounce back from anything. I walk around hoping I can continue to do those small things that keep the world from shattering them.
CATF: Is this play about religion or family?
SD: The cult is the driving force of the play, but it
is not what the play is about. It’s the circumstance of the play. This girl has been in the cult and we are witnessing a deprogramming in a motel room. But fundamentally, it’s about trying to put a family back together. As it turns out, the mother is not the only person in this play trying to put a family back together. CATF: In Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the
Prison of Belief, Lawrence Wright says, “Religion is always an irrational enterprise, no matter how 14 | fluent
ennobling it may be to the human spirit.” Is religion always an irrational enterprise? SD: It’s not my place to say that about anybody’s religion. I would say that when a religion manifests itself in a way that is negative to its adherents, then it deserves criticism. To the mother in “On Clover Road,” the thing that has taken her daughter away from her is absolutely irrational. But this play became a better play when the characters became more complex. There are no straight-up good characters and no straight-up bad cult characters. CATF: Yes, but there are restless and edgy characters…. SD: I like to think of myself as a centered and rational
person, but I also believe as a dramatist, what I have to do and what I get to do is write at the edge of the characters. I don’t want to live at the very edge of my life. I want to live in the center of my life. I don’t want my characters to live in the center of their lives. I want them on the edge.
CATF: You have said that, “The American theater needs
fewer chestnuts and more grenades.”
SD: The chestnuts are basically the “tried and the true”
plays; the plays that we’re all completely familiar with or the plays that cost us very little to go to. I have some sweet little love story plays that I’m completely proud of, but they are not the plays that Ed Herendeen will produce. Herendeen will wait for me to write “On Clover Road” — something’s that going to stir up trouble. When I wrote that essay in American Theater (where you found the quote in your question), all I saw around me was familiar not so much in terms of narrative, but in terms of the traditional white male canon. I think we’ve made some progress. I hope the playwrights in the generation after me just blow me out of the water. I hope that they are more rigorous and more adventuresome than I’ve been. I am hoping to still write plays with that kind of fire. CATF: You have said that you have “chosen a profes-
sion in which it is your mandate to be an explorer, not a curator of society.” You’ve also said, “The driving force in my plays is to get people interested in the world.” SD: Fundamentally, this moment hasn’t been written. No one has lived this very day. There is something radical about the present moment. Admittedly, the theater is not a headline art form. It can’t share its artistry as quickly as Twitter or Facebook, but I do think one of the successes of theater over the last 20 years is how it is responding — sometimes quickly — to popular public events and making you talk about them. I would not be alone among writers who express frustration when audiences or theaters say, “Oh, we already did an Iraq play” or “We already did an AIDS play” or “We already did our play about racism.” That’s ridiculously small-minded. All of these topics are an ongoing conversation in the culture and should be an ongoing conversation in the theater. I still definitely think of that as my mantra. CATF: You’ve said, “playwriting chose me….”
SD: I had no theater in my upbringing. I didn’t see a
play until I was in high school. In the early 80s, I was directing plays at The Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis when August Wilson, Jon Klein, Barbara Field, Lee Blessing, and other terrific playwrights were there. It’s purely happenstance that I was working with their plays during those particular years. By osmosis, I found an avenue for my writing.
I wish I could give my terrific MFA grad students the naiveté I had early in my career because my students understand the art form and the business which means they also understand how ridiculously hard it is to get your plays produced. Part of my great good fortune is that I had no idea how you got plays done, so I didn’t think it was impossible. CATF: You have said that theater audiences should “De-
mand fun. Demand fury. Getting your money’s worth is not enough. We must get our heart and mind’s worth.” SD: I don’t want to have a benign experience when I go to the theater. I want to laugh my ass off or I want to be shocked and surprised or I want to be infuriated. There is enough entertainment in the culture that is designed to placate me. The plays I love are the ones in which I’m trapped in a room and something happens that disrupts my habitual life. If I am going to share two hours of my life with the actor on stage who is sharing the exact same two hours of their life with me, the situation is already charged. The audience in me and the playwright in me want to take that charge and not let it dissipate. Think about how you feel when the houselights dim and the theater goes dark. Think about that amazingly beautiful moment, that moment of engagement when you say to yourself, “Oh my God, here we go!” I try to build my plays from that moment. CATF: What is unique about producing a play at the Con-
temporary American Theater Festival?
SD: It’s a hot house. Ed Herendeen is certainly unique.
They broke the mold on that guy in terms of what he’s built. I also love that it’s a repertory Festival — this creates that hot-house atmosphere that produces exciting work in actors. That it is outside the hub of a big city in a retreat setting is unique. I can fully immerse myself in my plays in a dynamic way that I can’t in other settings. CATF: The playright Barbara Hammond ended a piece
she wrote, entitled “How to Stay a New York Playwright,” with this: “Now close your eyes again, envision a stage, and watch someone walk on from stage left. Get that pencil and write down what she says.” My last question to you: Close your eyes, someone is walking on from stage left. What is that person saying? SD: That person is asking the audience, “Can you tell me who I am?” u fluent | 15
WORLD BUILDERS CATF: Where did you get the idea for “World Builders?”
JOHNNA ADAMS: I have a friend with schizoid
personality disorder, and I have a bipolar disorder as do several members of my mother’s family. I think every writer has a touch of the kind of disorder that the two main characters in “World Builders” — Whitney and Max — have. I became very obsessed with this idea of people who can create their own imaginative worlds. CATF: You have said that you write about what you’re
learning rather than about what you know. What did you learn from writing, “World Builders?” JA: I had the opportunity to explore schizoid personality disorder. The questions in this play are: “Is mental illness really so bad?” “At what point is mental illness productive or even superior to normal interactions in the world?” “Who’s allowed to make that judgment call?” “Is the patient allowed to say, ‘I’m not suffering. I’m kind of enjoying my mental illness’?” At what point does it become obviously unhealthy, insane behavior? There’s some validity to that type of argument. My characters are exploring that concept. They don’t mind their mental illnesses. Learning to live with something like a bipolar disorder means looking for the positive. I know that I wouldn’t have my playwriting career without my illness, so I try to embrace it as much as I can. At the same time, I would probably have done some better things in my life if I didn’t have it. Often, it’s a negotiation. The play is a dramatization of that, of me exploring that idea. CATF: Do you identify with one character over the
other — Whitney or Max? JA: Probably Whitney. Max is a lot more regimented and trapped by his disorder. Whitney is too, but not to the same extent. CATF: The two worlds these characters build could not
be more different. Whitney’s is vast and complex and Max’s is small and dark. JA: This play explores the process of poetry in the realms of the vast and the miniature. Gaston Bachelard is a literary critic who wrote Poetics of 16 | fluent
“World Builders” playwright Johnna Adams.
Reverie: Childhood, Language, and the Cosmos. This work constantly inspires my writing because it attempts to create a poetics and a logic for essentially a reverie state…everything from the kind of reverie you experience when you’re reading a book and your mind wanders in between a period and the next space, to daydreaming — when you flat out get lost in memories or fantasies. What happens to you? What triggers that? One of the concepts Bachelard explores is the effect of immensities and miniatures on poetic ideas. Think of the ocean — the type of poetry that immensity inspires in the body. On the other hand, think of a doll house — all the miniature furniture or a city built inside a nutshell…the type of reverie that triggers is just as strong and intense, but completely different. Whitney and Max have different poetics that are complementary but are also diametrically opposed. The type of feeling Whitney likes to create with her world is an expanse in herself. Max is compulsively recreating the ideas of control and miniature and containment. CATF: In your play “Gideon’s Knot” and now “World
Builders,” you make a fierce case for protecting the imagination. What’s so important about the imagination?
JA: I couldn’t get through my life without it or without
being able to indulge it. Another idea behind “World Builders’ is this: What if George R.R. Martin decided one day that he wasn’t going to finish his books, i.e., “My relationship with my wife is suffering. It’s not healthy to be so immersed in the world of ‘Game of Thrones.’ I’m just going to stop.” Some psychiatrist might applaud that, but the rest of the world would want to storm his house like angry peasants and demolish it. They would be furious because that imagined world is so important to so many people. How much of American culture — especially with the rise of episodic television — is dominated by fantasy world building and imagination scapes? I, like everyone else, am increasingly dependent on it. World building fulfills a rich, wonderful need for storytelling. I worry about the kind of life I would live in the absence of all that richness. CATF: You have said, “Stifle the imagination and lose
one of the greatest assets of humanity.” JA: I stand by it.
losing my bipolar edge. I wouldn’t want to lose my disorder entirely even though I would probably have a more productive, healthier and happy life without it. The feelings you can get in the mania part help me to write and complete my plays. They help me to come up with the worlds in my plays. CATF: You have said, “You can only be defeated by
invisible demons if you believe in them and let them work on you.” JA: The problem of being afraid of a mental condition is worse than the condition itself. When I stopped being afraid of potential occurrences of my mania, it made all the difference. Then it was incredibly easily managed, but it’s the fear that’s not manageable. I equate fears with demons. CATF: In the play, Whitney tells Max that she doesn’t
like that her drugs are “substituting feelings for other people in place of our worlds…if the pills work, I’ll be someone without a heart.” u
CATF: Is a wild imagination better than no imagination
at all? For example, the writings of James Holmes, the Aurora, Colorado theater shooter, are very, very wild. JA: Absolutely, a wild imagination is better than no imagination at all. The flatness of the world and of existence without imagination is just hard to contemplate. Imagination is not a bad thing. I get very worried when people claim that the imaginations of serial killers or mass murderers triggered that type of tragedy. You are looking in the wrong places. Look instead at a frustrated outlet for feelings they can’t understand and how, over time, it explodes. CATF: Are psychotropic drugs bad for the imagination?
JA: I’m not going to fly in the face of modern psychia-
try and say these drugs are bad. I’ve had moments with my bipolar disorder where that kind of medicated dullness is preferable to the alternative. I’m in a good place right now and not on medication, but I have been. The medication I was on didn’t deaden me completely, but I know a lot of them do. I know many bipolar people who worry that through medication, they may lose the benefits of the condition of being bipolar. I would very much mourn
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JA: This is a play of extremes. The idea is this: “Is love
worth killing two entire worlds over?” The conclusion of the play is, no, it really isn’t. Max and Whitney love these worlds. To them, these worlds are not bizarre or strange or dark and disordered daydreams. They have a reality that we really don’t understand just watching them. To Whitney, this is absolutely her life. Every relationship she’s ever had as an adult had to fit into her world with her characters.
CATF: In an interview in 2010, you said, “It takes time
to get your playwriting to come from your subconscious and for your fingertips to understand your plays as well as your imagination. Your imagination is inert, but your fingers are agile little workers. Fingers actually do things, fantasies don’t. Your plays live there, not in your head.” JA: If I were Max or Whitney, I would sit in a room and be perfectly happy just having my plays in my head. But I’m not. I’m a playwright and I need my fingers to work. I need to actually turn on the computer and write. I’d be much happier if I could just look in my head and say, “That’s great! That’s lovely!” But I can’t. That’s the big trick of writing. Getting a play from your head to the page. In order to get there, you need audience feedback. You need to learn how to listen very intently while an audience is watching your plays. Once that alchemy happens, then you can correctly translate what’s in your head. However, it’s still not a sure thing. I still only hit it once every other play. CATF: Your plays are not afraid of the dark….
JA: The successful ones are dark. I have to keep myself
entertained while writing and something dark and sort of forbidden keeps me interested. Dark things tend to be secretive things; they tend to be things we don’t discuss in public settings, and that creates a very interesting atmosphere in the theater. Like somebody screaming in church or somebody doing something inappropriate in a courtroom. If you simply gather people in a room and reconfirm everything they believe, you haven’t created good theater. Theater seems to work best when something is slightly inappropriate to the setting. CATF: You said that the theater that excites you
is “the theater that makes you laugh a lot, and then unexpectedly cry. You can feel the air leave the room
18 | fluent
for a minute and the audience holds their breath.” JA: Your primary tool for fixing your plays is being an audience member, and being hyper-aware of how an audience perceives your play. I get 99 percent of my feedback for rewrites by listening to the plays. I put a lot of pauses in plays for the audience because I like those moments of stillness where you can feel anyone around you coming to the same conclusion about what was just said on stage; we’ve all come to some mutual understanding none of us could articulate if we tried. I listen for a real sense of communion. CATF: Sounds sacred.
JA: Yes, there is something to it that’s sacred. CATF: The playwright Barbara Hammond ended an
article she wrote, entitled “How to Stay a New York Playwright,” with this: “Now close your eyes again, envision a stage, and watch someone walk on from stage left. Get that pencil and write down what she says.” My last question to you: Close your eyes, someone is walking on from stage left. What is she saying? JA: Is this a verbal writing prompt? I don’t have a good character coming in right now on my mental stage. That’s hard for me, finding the right place to invite those characters in. That’s not something I would do too lightly. If I’m going to create somebody walking in from stage left, I need to be in a sacred place to do it.
THE FULL CATASTROPHE
CATF: The Full Catastrophe is the middle book in The
Jeremy Cook Novels by David Carkeet. Why write a play adapted from this book? MICHAEL WELLER: The book was brought to me as a film project by the producer Merle Kailas, who had seen a play of mine and thought I was very good writing about marriage. The novel had had a big life with the Hollywood studios when it was first published, but no one had been able to figure out how to do it as a movie. I read the book and realized it would make a terrific play. CATF: Why do you write marriage really well?
MW: Good question. I’m married, and I notice it.
CATF: But why write about it?
MW: Drama is about conflict and the solution to the
conflict and renewed conflict. Isn’t that another way of describing marriage? It seems like a fairly natural thing to put on stage. One of the basic rules of drama is pick something everyone knows. Marriage is something that everyone knows. CATF: Jeremy Cook, the main character in “The Full Ca-
tastrophe,” is a linguist. So marriage is about semantics? MW: That’s the joke, and it’s a wonderful one. The lovely conceit of the book is that a crackpot, mysterious researcher called Roy Pillow thinks he’s solved the problem by what turns out to be a linguistic mistake of his own: thinking that communication means better grammar. It’s of course about something very different, but the misunderstanding is, for me, one of those profoundly brilliant comic conceits that yields all sorts of dramatic possibilities.
“The Full Ctastrophe” playwright Michael Weller.
CATF: Roy Pillow, the “crackpot, mysterious researcher”
said in this play: “There is a horror at the heart of every marriage and it’s the same horror.” Is there a horror at the heart of every marriage? MW: So he says.
CATF: Do you think there is?
MW: No, not really. I think that he thinks so and
his marriage record certainly bears that out. It’s not a horror, but what’s puzzling about marriage is that we’re so drawn to it and it’s such a source of discomfort when it’s bad and such a source of support and joy when it’s good. And we just can’t figure that out, why it can’t be simpler, like an ATM machine. Marriage is a total swirl — call it a “horror” if you want. For me, it’s a comedy if you simply exaggerate what is really the case. CATF: I asked the playwright Bruce Graham, who
had a comedy at CATF last year, about Coleridge’s perspective that comedy was “more useable and more relevant to the human condition than tragedy.” What do you think about that? MW: It depends on where you’re sitting and how you’re doing in life. People whose wives are taken away by invading armies or who die of horrible diseases or work long, long hours every day would feel that tragedy is a comfortable portrait of their destiny. But a comedic outcome feels far more real in America, where we tend to go to therapists when we’re on the verge of some personal catastrophe and they help us talk ourselves out of it. u fluent | 19
CATF: One of the lines in this play is “Recognize
love in time or you’ll lose it.” What’s the secret to recognizing love in time? MW: You have to have the courage to risk love at all times. If you hedge your bets because you think this isn’t right or that isn’t right about another person, then you really will misunderstand which part of that complicated feeling toward them is the important one.
CATF: So love is worth it?
MW: I think it is. I just don’t understand an approach to life that doesn’t involve trying to communicate completely with another person — or with a lot of people. Otherwise, why would I be a playwright? I’m there trying to reach a lot of people because I think feelings inside me that ordinary, day-to-day interchange don’t allow to come out easily can be beautifully achieved on stage. And they can be beautifully achieved in an intimate relationship if it’s a good one.
CATF: You have said that when you work on a play
you’re on a journey of some kind. “It’s where I am in the bigger journey of a play and what I’m trying to work out in it that matters to me.” What kind of journey are you on in “The Full Catastrophe?” MW: “The Full Catastrophe” is a commission, so my quote doesn’t entirely apply here. Generally, when I’m working on a play of my own, I don’t know why the journey calls me to take it. Once the journey starts, I’m following a series of unstated questions inside myself. Not questions like “What’s green and has three eyes?” but rather, “What can happen in a scene by the time it’s over that I will think is true and will persuade and satisfy me?” Usually it involves something deep inside me that I can’t talk about any other way. CATF: An October 2008 New York Times review of your
play “Fifty Words” says that your plays are “propelled by a longing to be alone and a longing to never ever be alone.” With that in mind, how do you respond to this line from David Hare’s 1985 movie, Wetherby: “If you’re frightened by loneliness, never get married.” MW: That’s very David. The writer’s dilemma is that they want by turns to be completely known and they want to remain completely concealed. There’s a push-pull at the center of the act of writing that’s inherent. I think it’s cavalier of David to put it that
20 | fluent
way but I know how he does his business in a play and that’s a likely statement from him. I just don’t agree with him and on some very fundamental level. He and I are totally opposite human beings in the way we experience the world. CATF: Do you ever wake up and say, “Who the hell is
this person next to me?” MW: Oh no. I understand and know my wife very well. I do sometimes ask, “Why the hell is she like that? Why can’t she see that? This is ridiculous what she’s doing.” But I know exactly why she’s doing it. At least I’ve explained it to myself. I spend a lot of my time observing people. This is the cruel thing about being a writer. You do watch people carefully and you sometimes come to understand them very well. But I never ask, “Who is this?” It would be very, very difficult for my wife to completely surprise me. She often surprises me in small ways, but if she did something entirely out of character, I would really be thrown by it. CATF: In “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?” the char-
acter George Washington describes his relationship to Martha as “Dashed hopes and good intentions: Good, better, best, bested.” What do you think of that? MW: I know Edward Albee a little, and I understand how he arrives at that idea. That’s just not my experience. As an outsider to marriage — Albee saw his own parents’ marriage through the eyes of an adopted child, and that’s a very specific perspective to bring into the world…my experience of life is not that.When you become close to somebody and you truly love them, there’s a part of you that’s sometimes startled by the fact that they don’t understand how both godly and how flawed you are. They don’t always bring exactly the right amount of respect and comfort you expect. That’s a very useful thing because it helps you see that sometimes you’re an arrogant asshole and you really need to be humbled a little bit and be glad that somebody’s so willing to remain with you. CATF: This play makes several references to
listening — “We should all listen more carefully.” How has listening helped your marriage and your craft? MW: Listening helps everything. People are amazed when you listen. When you hear beyond what they are trying to say to what they are trying to say underneath,
it’s a big gift for them. But it’s also a big gift for you. From a writer’s point of view, we’re dealing mainly with the visible universe. We’re reporting what can be observed. But we’re also always trying to suggest the shimmer behind it. If you listen carefully for the little doors that open in a conversation, doors to what you know someone is not telling you, you get better at creating a world with surfaces that suggests a lot of unstated intention beneath and behind the words. Audiences like that. CATF: You have said that the mirror neurons in the
brain are more powerfully activated by a play than by other media. MW: If you see a photograph of somebody being killed by another person, it’s shocking. But if you actually see the person killed, it’s devastating. A live experience is inescapable. In film you’re so used to seeing those images you tend to dismiss it as just another image. But when a person’s in front of you impersonating the emotion and the action — even though you know they’re faking it — you get completely lost in their act
of doing it because they are physically in front of you, embodying it. Theater is a tribal act. We’re doing something very primitive during a live performance: We’re tracking game. We watch actors on stage, and we become hunters watching characters who don’t know we can see them. Of course, we know they know, but at the moment we are completely engaged with them, we are stalking prey, watching every move to see which way they’re going to go. Watching live action is very, very primitive. CATF: What’s distinctive about producing a play with
the Contemporary American Theater Festival? MW: It’s a theater with a real artistic director. Ed reads every play. He doesn’t give it to a committee. His taste is so wonderfully eclectic, and he loves theaters and plays. It’s the way the great artistic directors that I love have operated — Joe Papp, etc. They had a theater, they knew what they loved and didn’t apologize for it. They put it out there and the only common thread was that there was a strong personality making all u
PHOTOS BY CHRIS WEISLER
A Fun Place to Dine Before or After the Show In the Heart of Historic Shepherdstown
304-876-8477 • 112 West German Street • www.bistro112.com fluent | 21
the choices. I love being a part of the family of choices he makes. CATF: The playright Barbara Hammond ended a
piece she wrote, entitled “How to Stay a New York Playwright,” with this: “Now close your eyes again, envision a stage, and watch someone walk on from stage left. Get that pencil and write down what she says.” My last question to you: Close your eyes, someone is walking on from stage left. What is that person saying? MW: I have no idea. Until there is a context, I don’t know where to begin. For me, until there’s a situation, there’s no drama. I think the world is a set of conditions into which you put a disruption and then…you watch. “We Are Pussy Riot” playwright Barbara Hammond.
WE ARE PUSSY RIOT CATF: Why Pussy Riot?
BARBARA HAMMOND: Pussy Riot hit a nerve, not
only in Russia but also, maybe even more so, in the West. They are contemporary artists posing as a feminist punk band. One of the brilliant things about Pussy Riot is that they are so outrageous and kind of “bad” at what they do — and I mean that as a compliment — no one but themselves could have thought of it. The CIA would never have orchestrated something as original as Pussy Riot. CATF: It’s an irony that Pussy Riot is homegrown. BH: Yes, absolutely. I was also attracted to them
because they are girls. I like calling them girls. There’s something playful, even innocent, about their actions, though they are obviously very intelligent and at least two of them are mothers. “Girls” is a good word that has been taken away from us. CATF: They’re like Pippi Longstocking or Scout from
To Kill A Mockingbird? BH: Well, I think they’re in the tradition of young women who stand out because they don’t behave like young women are told to behave. Kathleen Hanna — one of the founders of the Riot Grrrl Movement, which happened in the 90s 22 | fluent
in the northwest United States and influenced Pussy Riot — said, “Women make natural anarchists and revolutionaries because they’ve always been secondclass citizens, having to claw their way out.” It’s true — we have Joan of Arc, Mary Magdalene and Malala Yousafzai…people respect and gravitate toward women who speak their minds. These women often pay a heavy price for that attention (like being burnt at the stake or labeled a whore) but they are often admired and celebrated. Women’s power in their own culture, in any human culture on earth, has a complicated history. Women can make a claim to be outsiders in their own countries, since they rarely wrote their founding documents, or fought the wars that determined borders, or won the elections that determined the nation’s shape and values. I appreciate looking at the world from the outside. Outsider status can be a luxury. CATF: How does a play, specifically, enlighten the story
of Pussy Riot in a way a documentary or another genre can’t? BH: Each audience member will answer this for themselves after they see this play. “Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer” was a great documentary that reports what happened in Moscow in 2012 and tells its story with video and images and quotes. In my play, I’m moving beyond the news story — I’m using the story of Pussy Riot to examine an aspect of our culture.
CATF: Are you writing a play about Pussy Riot the way
Pussy Riot would? BH: No. Pussy Riot wouldn’t write a play. Pussy Riot’s actions are spontaneous, public and often get them arrested. CATF: You want us to be Pussy Riot, don’t you?
BH: I want you to ask yourselves if you are or not.
CATF: But the name of your play is, “We Are Pussy Riot....It’s not “Are We Pussy Riot?” BH: I would say, and I think they would say, we can all be Pussy Riot — and if we’re not, why aren’t we? Are we happy with the status quo? Do we value order and tradition more than self-expression? They are all questions worth asking. One of my working titles for the play was, “We Are All Pussy Riot.” Another was “Everything is PR.” The acronym PR is perfect for Pussy Riot. “Public Relations” is just another word for Propaganda. Pussy Riot self-consciously made themselves undeniable, first of all, with their name. If they had called themselves “Feminists Against Putin” we would never have heard of them. “Everything is PR” still might be the best title for this play.
CATF: Describing the lessons of Anna Akhmatova’s art,
the poet Joseph Brodsky said: “The comprehension of personal drama betters one’s chances of weathering the drama of history.” Have you comprehended the metaphysics of your personal drama? BH: You should read my “Eva Trilogy.” I could not have written “We Are Pussy Riot” without having written “The Eva Trilogy.” I heard a war correspondent I know tell a young journalist that the suffering in the world won’t make sense to you until you can access and have compassion for your own suffering. It’s understandable to run away from it. It is not something where you suddenly go, “Ah-ha! Now I understand my personal drama.” It unfolds throughout one’s life. CATF: The documentary “Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer”
opens with this quote from Bertolt Brecht: “Art is not a mirror to reflect the world, but a hammer with which to shape it.” How does this contrast with this quote from John Updike: “Art begins with a wound. Art is an attempt to learn to live with the wound.” BH: I would word it differently than either one and say the purpose of art is to expose the wound. You expose the wound and then it’s up to the participant in the art whether they are going to live with it or smash it. I don’t think the artist is holding the hammer. The audience decides what they want in their hands. They can have a scalpel or a hammer —or a tourniquet. My job is to expose the wound. CATF: During the 48 seconds those members of Pussy
Riot performed at the altar in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior, they sang this: “Shit! Shit. It’s God’s shit!” Is shouting/singing that in a church appropriate? BH: I don’t think they would have done it if it was appropriate — so no, it was absolutely inappropriate! CATF: In the documentary, one of the members of Pussy Riot said that talk and compromise get you nowhere, only riot and revolution. BH: I believe whichever member of Pussy Riot said this was referring to the totalitarian state in which she lives. Sometimes talk and compromise can get you somewhere. Riot and revolution, too, have gotten people places. The United States, for example, wouldn’t exist if we hadn’t had a revolution. u
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CATF: Flannery O’Connor, a devout Catholic, said, “I
have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace. Their heads are so hard that almost nothing else will work.” Is the “in-yourface” strategy of Pussy Riot a form of verbal violence? BH: A cousin who plays piano in a chamber choir watched the Pussy Riot video and afterwards sent me an email: “I’m an atheist, but I love choral music and it killed me to listen to Pussy Riot destroy Rachmaninoff in a loud ugly punk mash-up. It killed me.” There are many legitimate reactions to what Pussy Riot did in that cathedral. Pussy Riot brought attention to the fact that the head of the Russian Orthodox Church stated that Putin is a “miracle of God” and that believers should vote for him. I believe that the girls did not intend to hurt the feelings of believers. Maybe they didn’t care about those feelings, but the message they were sending was intended as a political statement, not a statement against the Orthodox faith.
CATF: You said once, “I used to get joy from freedom,
and now I find it in intimacy.” How would members of Pussy Riot respond to this? BH: Give them 20 years and see what they say. CATF: You end a piece you wrote entitled “How to
Stay a New York Playwright” with this: “Now close your eyes again, envision a stage, and watch someone walk on from stage left. Get that pencil and write down what she says.” My last question to you: Close your eyes, someone is walking on from stage left. What is she saying? BH: “Why can’t it always be like this?” fluent
The Contemporary American Theater Festival’s 25th Season: July 10–August 2, 2015. catf.org After-play Salons hosted by Bistro 112: Jul 18 & 25, Aug 1
“Local Color”: An Exhibition of Paintings, Prints & Turned Wood by Susan Carney – Rhonda Smith – Neil Super Shepherdstown Community Club, July 30 – August 2
“Local Color”: An Exhibition of Paintings, Prints & Turned Wood
THU / FRI 10 AM–8 PM, SAT 9 AM–9 PM, SUN 9 AM–5 PM • OPENING RECEPTION SAT, AUG 1, 5 PM–9 PM 24 | fluent
Schedule 25th Anniversary Season: July 10-Aug 2, 2015
** Opening Night, followed by the OPENING NIGHT CELEBRATION ^ These performances will be followed by a POST-SHOW DISCUSSION
PAY-WHAT-YOU-CAN
WEEK ONE
SAT 7/11
SUN 7/12
10:00 am
CONTEXT
BREAKFAST
12:00 pm
WORLD
WORLD
2:00 pm
CLOVER
TOUCH
EVERYTHING YOU TOUCH TUE, 7/7 8PM • THUR 7/9 8PM
2:30 pm
PUSSY RIOT
CATASTROPHE
THE FULL CATASTROPHE TUE, 7/7 8:30PM • THUR, 7/9 8:30PM
4:30 pm
LECTURE
WORLD
PREVIEWS: JULY 5-9 ON CLOVER ROAD SUN, 7/5 7PM • WED, 7/8 8PM
12:30 pm
WE ARE PUSSY RIOT SUN, 7/5 7:30PM • WED, 7/8 8:30PM
WORLD BUILDERS TUE, 7/7 6PM • WED, 7/8 6PM • THUR, 7/9 6PM
WORLD BUILDERS by Johnna Adams
STUDIO 112 | CCA I | 92 WEST CAMPUS DRIVE RUN TIME: 90 MINUTES
EVERYTHING YOU TOUCH by Sheila Callaghan
BOX OFFICE OPENS ONE HOUR PRIOR TO CURTAIN. FIRST COME, FIRST SERVE.
WEEK TWO
TUES 7/14
WED 7/15
6:00 pm
FRI 7/10
LUNCH & ART
WORLD**
8:00 pm
CLOVER**
TOUCH**
8:30 pm
PUSSY RIOT**
CATASTROPHE**
THUR 7/16
FRI 7/17
SAT 7/18
SUN 7/19
CONTEXT
BREAKFAST
WORLD
WORLD
FRANK CENTER STAGE | 260 UNIVERSITY DRIVE RUN TIME: 120 MINUTES
12:00 pm
WORLD
ON CLOVER ROAD
12:30 pm
LUNCH & ART
LUNCH & ART SHOWCASE
FRANK CENTER STAGE | 260 UNIVERSITY DRIVE RUN TIME: 120 MINUTES
BREAKFAST
2:00 pm
TOUCH
CLOVER
2:30 pm
CATASTROPHE
PUSSY RIOT
WORLD
WORLD
4:30 pm
WE ARE PUSSY RIOT
TOUCH
CLOVER
CATASTROPHE
PUSSY RIOT
LECTURE
WORLD
WORLD
TOUCH
by Barbara Hammond
6:00 pm
MARINOFF THEATER | CCA II | 62 WEST CAMPUS DRIVE RUN TIME: 100 MINUTES
6:30 pm
THE FULL CATASTROPHE
8:00 pm
TOUCH^
CLOVER^
TOUCH
CLOVER
8:30 pm
CATASTROPHE
PUSSY RIOT
CATASTROPHE
PUSSY RIOT
by Michael Weller
MARINOFF THEATER | CCA II | 62 WEST CAMPUS DRIVE RUN TIME: 90 MINUTES
BREAKFAST WITH ED 10:00AM | CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ARTS II ROOM G03 | 62 WEST CAMPUS DRIVE ($25)
LUNCH & ART 12:30PM | CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ARTS II ROOM G03 | 62 WEST CAMPUS DRIVE ($30)
PRESENTED FREE OF CHARGE thanks to the West Virginia Humanities Council: A scholarly approach to the CATF repertory. Free but requires reservation. ROOM G03 | CCA II | 62 WEST CAMPUS DRIVE
LECTURE Distinguished guest speakers discuss issues raised in the plays at the popular talktheater Lecture Series. REYNOLDS HALL | 109 NORTH KING STREET Join CATF for Stage Readings of new plays. MARINOFF THEATER | CCA II | 62 WEST CAMPUS DRIVE
SALON Enjoy a late-night drink, lite fare, and discussion with CATF staff at Bistro 112. 112 WEST GERMAN STREET
APPRENTICE SHOWCASE A newly created program featuring members of the University of Iowa’s Theatre Arts Department. Directed by CATF alum Anne Marie Nest. STUDIO 112 | CCA I | 92 WEST CAMPUS DRIVE
contemporaryamericantheaterfestival AT S H E P H E R D U N I V E R S I T Y
304.876.3473 800.999.CATF
catf.org
CATASTROPHE
7:00 pm
10:30 pm WEEK THREE
SALON
TUES 7/21
WED 7/22
THUR 7/23
FRI 7/24
SAT 7/25
SUN 7/26
10:00 am
BREAKFAST
CONTEXT
BREAKFAST
12:00 pm
WORLD
WORLD
WORLD
CLOVER
TOUCH
PUSSY RIOT
CATASTROPHE
LECTURE
WORLD
12:30 pm
LUNCH & ART
2:00 pm
CLOVER
2:30 pm
PUSSY RIOT
SHOWCASE CATASTROPHE
4:30 pm
6:30 pm
WORLDˆ
WORLD
WORLD
WORLD
READING
CLOVER PUSSY RIOT
7:00 pm 8:00 pm 8:30 pm
CATASTROPHE
CLOVER
TOUCH
CLOVER
TOUCH
PUSSY RIOT^
CATASTROPHE^
PUSSY RIOT
CATASTROPHE
10:30 pm WEEK FOUR
READING
WORLD
READING
6:00 pm
CATF IN CONTEXT
CLOVER PUSSY RIOT
10:00 am
by Steven Dietz
WORLD
6:30 pm
SALON
TUES 7/28
WED 7/29
THUR 7/30
FRI 7/31
10:00 am 12:00 pm
WORLD
12:30 pm
SUN 8/2
CONTEXT
BREAKFAST
WORLD
WORLD
TOUCH
CLOVER
CATASTROPHE
PUSSY RIOT
LECTURE
WORLD
WORLD
TOUCH
LUNCH & ART
2:00 pm
TOUCH
2:30 pm
CATASTROPHE
SHOWCASE PUSSY RIOT
4:30 pm 6:00 pm 6:30 pm
SAT 8/1
WORLD
WORLD
WORLD
READING
CATASTROPHE
7:00 pm 8:00 pm 8:30 pm 10:30 pm
CATASTROPHE
TOUCH
CLOVER
TOUCH
CLOVER
CATASTROPHE
PUSSY RIOT
CATASTROPHE
PUSSY RIOT SALON
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