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| Playwrights (L to R) Jen Silverman, Kemp Powers, Meg Miroshnik, Noah Haidle and Rachel Bonds |
This year's festival will bring the total number of plays presented in PPF to 123, including many that have become mainstays of contemporary American theatre. This year's group of playwrights range from SCR newcomers Jen Silverman and Kemp Powers to returning playwrights Meg Miroshnik (The Droll), Noah Haidle (Smokefall) and Rachel Bonds (Five Mile Lake). The five playwrights in this case, took sometime to share parts of their literary lives and a glimpse into their writing spaces.
Jen Silverman
Wink
Wink
Why is this your writing space?I like walls and corners. And alligators.
What’s the story you read in secret?
My parents love books, and our house was always full of them. Nothing felt that secret. I remember finding and reading Nabokov’s Lolita when I was 10 or 11. I told this to someone once and they were so freaked out that my parents hadn’t stopped me. But the thing my parents always got is that kids ignore the stuff they don’t have the tools to understand….which was clear to me when I reread the book years later. I was like, “Oh, this is about pedophilia? I thought this was about a road-trip!”
When did you know you wanted to be a playwright?
I stumbled into playwriting as a freshman at Brown University. Emily O’Dell was getting her MFA at the time and was responsible for teaching/corrupting the freshman. She was behind so much amazing madness, including a bizarre night of plays from which the only image I retain is a glorious bohemian creature whispering “syphilis” into a cordless mic. Needless to say, hooked for life.
What play changed your life?
Sarah Kane’s Blasted, Caryl Churchill’s Faraway, Basil Kreimendahl’s Orange Julius. At different moments and in different ways, but indelibly.
Kemp Powers
Little Black Shadows
Little Black Shadows
Why is this your writing space?I primarily write at my dining room table. Largely because the dining room is easily flooded with natural light, which is my preferred lighting method. I'm much more of a daytime than nighttime writer.
What’s the story you read in secret?
Judy Blume's Blubber.
When did you know you wanted to be a playwright?
There wasn't a single "aha" moment. I've always been a storyteller, in one form or another. I guess after spending more than 15 years as a journalist and realizing the stories I now longed to tell were not meant for that medium, I knew it was time to make a change. I'd always been a tremendous theater enthusiast, but I viewed it as the art form that "other people got to do." I started off doing storytelling, and that morphed into a one-man show, which helped me realize I had zero desire to be a performer. Then I started writing for short play and 24 hour play festivals until eventually, someone asked if I had any play ideas of my own that I wanted to write.
What plays changed your life?
A Soldier's Play. Cabaret. The Tempest. My first trip overseas in my early 20s was a spur-of-the-moment flight to London to catch a production of The Tempest at the Barbican. I still have the framed poster from that production. It's a gigantic photo of Prospero.
Meg Miroshnik
Lady Tattoo
Lady Tattoo
Why is this your writing space?I finally got unpacked from a recent move!
What’s the story you read in secret?
Besides sneaking in a little V.C. Andrews here and there, I think the most important secretive storytelling experience I've ever had was surreptitiously renting a VHS copy of Thelma and Louise. It's a great fricking movie, but I think having snuck in my first viewing has caused me to remember it even more fondly.
When did you know you wanted to be a playwright?
I did a lot of acting as a kid in Minneapolis and, when I was 17, I booked my dream job: the role of Meg in a production of Little Women. It felt like destiny! After all, I'd been named after the character. There was just one moment that I found difficult. I had to laugh at the actor playing Amy and I always found myself getting nervous before that moment, anxious that I might not be able to do it. I was so worried about staying present enough to laugh that I couldn't possibly relax and laugh. It got so bad that matinee school groups would start laughing at me trying to laugh at Amy. After that experience, I knew. I was not an actor. But I was still in love with theater and still wanted a way in. I could write and imagine a moment of pure, uninhibited laughing, but I would need to let others actually live it.
What play changed your life?
Mud by Maria Irene Fornes. I've never actually seen a production of it, but I remember pulling a copy off the library shelf and having that moment where the top of my head kind of lifted off. That play just opened up my sense of what makes a play a play. And it was the first play I remember reading in which a character told a story within a story. I am a sucker for the story within a story. I'm already three-quarters of the way toward liking something if a character says "once upon a time."
Noah Haidle
A Perfect Circle
A Perfect Circle
Why is this your writing space?It’s close to the refrigerator.
What’s the story you read in secret?
If I said it wouldn’t be a secret. If nothing else I hope I’m a man of some discretion.
What play changed your life and coincidentally was the moment that made you want to be a playwright?
My brother was in some murder mystery in the high school cafeteria. I can ask my Mom as to its exact title, but safe to say something along the lines of Gadzooks the Cook is Dead. Here’s a truly dime store psychological profile of my life: my brother is 4 years older than me, was a really really smart kid (PhD Organic Chemistry, Harvard). This was in a small Midwestern public school—he was special—I had every teacher he had, and they all looked at me askance, “So you’re Andrew Haidle’s little brother, huh?” He played soccer, I played soccer, he played tennis, I played tennis, he was captain of the quizbowl team (group jeopardy for nerds), I was captain of the quizbowl team. But when I auditioned for Gadzooks the Cook is Dead, or its equivalent, I failed so epically I’ve never tried acting again but became a playwright instead.
Rachel Bonds
Curve of Departure
Curve of Departure
Why is this your writing space?I used to write in our apartment in Greenpoint, but that got to be too distracting. Last year I started renting a desk at Brooklyn Writers’ Space in Cobble Hill, which was life-changing. There was something about having to do the 20-minute commute every day, and the absolute quiet there, and just the empty desk with a single lamp that helped my productivity and focus enormously. Plus no one is allowed to talk to you. It’s wonderful.
What’s the story you read in secret?
I would always hide Sweet Valley High books in the pile that my mom would check out for me from the library, which was typically full of actual literature written by esteemed writers. She did not approve of Sweet Valley High. Which, now that I think about it, and look at Google images of the book covers featuring tiny, tan, blue-eyed blond girls, makes a lot of sense.
When did you know you wanted to be a playwright?
I don’t know that there was one moment when I realized the whole thought. I think I learned bit by bit, in almost imperceptible ways, over the two years after I graduated college. I was trying to be an actor, but also writing both prose and plays. At some point I noticed that the people whose successes I would feel jealous of were always writers. There was also one night, very early on in our relationship, when my husband, said to me “I think that acting is ultimately going to make you shrink, and writing is going to make you expand.” He was right. I knew he was right. After that, I slowly let my acting pursuits fall away. I didn’t miss them. And I shifted all of my focus to writing, which felt hard and terrifying, and also discouraging at times, but also right.
What play changed your life?
When I was in college, I saw this play by Forced Entertainment, I think at PS 122, that consisted of Tim Etchells sitting at a table and reading stories and showing videos people had sent to him. It was called Instructions for Forgetting. I still think about it all the time. I would add Nature Theatre of Oklahoma’s No Dice to this list. And more recently, An Octoroon.
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