Interview-The Brightest Thing in the World

The Beautiful Thing about a New Play: An interview with playwright Leah Nanako Winkler and director Margot Bordelon

Leah Nanako Winkler’s The Brightest Thing in the World is Yale Repertory Theatre’s first world premiere play since 2019. The play was commissioned and developed by Yale, with the resources of its robust new-play development program, the Binger Center for New Theatre. Over the past four years, and throughout a global pandemic, Leah has been able to continue writing the piece and begin a rich collaboration with director Margot Bordelon.

The production dramaturgs Lily Haje and Amy Boratko sat down with Leah and Margot to talk about bringing this story to life.

The Beautiful Thing about a New Play

Amy Boratko: Leah, you were

Lily Haje: The Brightest Thing in

commissioned by Yale Repertory Theatre in 2018 to write a play.

What was the impulse behind writing this particular story?

the World, like your plays Kentucky and God Said This, is set in Lexington, Kentucky, one of the places you grew up. Why did you choose to set the story of this play in Lexington?

Leah Nanako Winkler: I wanted to offer a different lens into people struggling with the disease of addiction, in a way that we haven’t seen before. This desire stemmed from a very personal and emotional place, in addition to knowing some very funny, bright, regular people who suffered, or are suffering from, substance abuse disorder. All of them were, or are, nothing like the typical awards-bait portrayals of “addicts” we have all seen in film, tv, and theater.

Going into writing the commission, I had a blueprint in mind to create a group of characters that the audience could hopefully see themselves in. I also knew I wanted to write a play with elements of comedy and knew the type of bakery like the one that ended up in the play would be involved somehow. Another thing I was sure of is that I wanted to go back physically to Kentucky and interview people (some of whom I knew and some I didn’t know) who have been affected by this war. This commission allowed me the time and resources to do that. And though this is a completely original and fictional play authentic to me as a writer—the volume of people who wanted to talk to me, the stories they told, and the insights they gave me quickly affirmed that something has been missing when we tell stories about the disease of addiction.

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LNW: I think that it’s become a misconception that I set all my plays in Lexington, Kentucky, because those are mostly the ones that have been produced in New York. I’ve actually written a dozen full-length plays, and only three of them, including this one, are set there. The Brightest Thing in the World is specifically set where it is because I always start writing plays from a personal and/or emotional place. I grew up in Lexington, by way of Japan, and started noticing about a decade or so ago that a lot of people from my hometown were affected by the opioid epidemic. I even remember those pills casually going around in my high school.

There’s also obviously a big divide between blue states and red states, and I think that the theater industry and audiences on the coasts specifically have a tendency to make work that fetishizes places like Kentucky to feel smart. I think people with substance abuse disorders are fetishized in a similar way. I’m honestly sick of watching millionaire movie stars make themselves their version of ugly and poor to play southern or midwestern people who struggle with the disease of addiction. It seems like smug cosplay, and I’m allergic to smug. I like to create underestimated characters who subvert and exceed expectations—creating a threesome

of smart Kentucky women who are more complex, funny, interesting, mainstream, whip-smart than expected seemed like a good fit to hopefully create more understanding and common ground.

LH: While this play confronts difficult

AB: Margot, Leah began writing

on comedy. I had always felt more compelled to direct comedy than tragedy or drama, but now I like to find the balance of both.

To me, so much of comedy is rhythm. It’s music. Leah writes the music so clearly, or at least it’s in a way that I think that I can hear it.

this play, in response to so much of what she was observing and experiencing, in 2018, and much of the development of the play has happened since the Covid-19 pandemic. Can you both talk about if and how the pandemic affected this particular play, in both the writing and making the entire production?

Margot Bordelon: If Covid hadn’t happened, this play could be taking place from 2019 to 2022, in the “present day.” It’s the effect that the pandemic has had on the world that has suddenly made this a contemporary period piece. It’s just become such a milestone for our society that we couldn’t do a piece set “now” that progresses through time and not address that happening.

But even with that specificity, Leah’s play has contemporary universality in how it still resonates today.

LNW: Addiction is often referred to as a disease of isolation. Being in recovery during a period of intense added isolation in 2020, when many treatment centers were closed to or limiting in-person visits, is an element that this play’s world doesn’t have. So the shift felt natural. I think that that play is a different play than The Brightest Thing in the World. An important one. I hope someone writes it.

and serious material, it also has a lot of comedy. How do you weave together darkness and humor?

MB: I came into directing working

LNW: Even though my plays deal with big issues, they all tend to be comedies or at least have a lot of comedic elements. That’s because I think we are often the most hilarious as human beings—even if it’s just in retrospect—when we are the most serious and desperate. The play is never punching down, but rather, finding absurdity in the darkness.

Humor is a coping mechanism and a tool for comfort, and I wanted the audience to feel comfortable being introduced to these characters. It’s important to note that the script isn’t designed to make audiences laugh at anyone in the play, but to laugh because they see themselves, their mistakes, their potential choices in the characters. This play’s humor isn’t judgmental.

LH: Is there a particular approach you take to working on new plays?

MB: My way in is always text. I had a really emotional response to my first read of The Brightest Thing in the 3

The Beautiful Thing about a New Play World, and I have never forgotten that feeling. I want a playwright to feel really listened to, to trust that I am reading their play deeply. This is the first time this story’s being told. It’s important to me that the playwright is in agreement with the choices I make with the actors or with the design.

It’s a lateral relationship in birthing it together with the playwright.

LNW: That’s so interesting, because that’s where we balance each other out. I’m a firm believer in, “don’t think, just put it out there,” for my early drafts. Then my favorite part of the process is peeling back the text. And you’re so rigorous about observing every word that your process teaches me things about my own play. It reminds me of how great collaboration can be and how we are working toward the same thing.

AB: Given that this is the world premiere of Leah’s play, and that the elements of the production are coming together for the first time, what do you hope audiences will bring to the final part of this process?

LNW: During the time when there was no in-person theater, I felt very empty, like a part of myself was missing, and I felt that both as an audience member and a playwright.

We come to the theater for some sort of catharsis, whether that’s to laugh or to feel validated, or even to feel angry and devastated. New plays are very alive, and their audiences are the first people to bring it alive.

MB: I always say to actors that the audience is like their final scene partner. You begin with a play—it’s a blueprint for performance. The actors embody that play, but it’s not until we have the audience attend that it becomes a full event. What’s so beautiful about new plays is they examine the moment that we live in right now; unlike a revival, a new play is tackling the big questions that are immediate to that writer. So, I hope audiences will come with a spirit of engagement and listening.

LNW: Live theater, unlike TV or movies available to us as finished products, changes night-to-night depending on the audience. I want audiences to come in ready to have whatever reactions that they’re inspired to have because I don’t know what my play is actually doing to people until I see and hear them in the theater. I want them to know that they’re the last piece of the puzzle to bring this specific play, on that specific night, into completion.

Watch + Listen:

The cast discusses The Brightest Thing in the World

Read the full production program 4