Summer Play Festival
Playwrights Blog

Take a look at the video below from my trip to Germany!

Have to do this quick because I´m at an internet cafe. Bielefeld is beautiful and crisp, a village of about 300,000 perched in low hills 3 hours West of Berlin. They have a state theater here. (Every village has one) Theatre Bielefeld has a budget somewhere in the 19 million range. I´m not a money person, but am told the budget´s about as much as the Met opera. Let´s repeat… and they have one of these joints in EVERY TOWN. It is amazing how art is woven into the fabric of the community here. Meanwhile, still they have local folks doing fundraising to cover events like our festival, who threw us a fabulous dinner on Tuesday, wined and dined us, made us guess what vegetable was in the soup, (white carrots), and all in English, as only two of the Americans here have any passing knowledge of German. I´m told that a lot of the content of my play is going to get lost in translation… the magic realism, the Civil War subplot and all the Southernisms, although the actor playing Jacob told me that the peer-group divisions that separate Slaughter and Chesnutt (her a reject & him a jock, the across-the-tracks love story) are totally universal, recognizable, and seen among German young people all the time. My director thought that Chickenscratch (which is just a guy´s name) was supposed to wear a chicken suit. It´s kind of German style to impose that kind of severe image onto a script, although I find it somewhat alarming. We´re still talking that one out… All a whirlwind. Jetlag. I learned the words for love and freedom yesterday but cannot spell them.



Staged reading of Grunes Madchen (Green Girl).



Poster for the festival on a column on a Bielefeld street.

It’s Sunday night. I fly tomorrow, Columbus Day, for the German reading of Green Girl in Voices from Undergroundzero, which is going to be in excellent company, and I’m so looking forward to seeing the other NYC-based playwrights over there across the Atlantic in Grimm-brothers country on the most epic theater field trip I’ve ever been on. Haven’t packed or done laundry yet, cram tomorrow, because I’ve been deadline-after-deadline all month, writing on a couple different new projects since SPF wrapped up (a stuntman play, a one-act, a musical). I speak no German. I have one map. I asked everyone to give me German words for my birthday, which was last week. Here are the results:
Shatz means darling.
Vogel means bird.
Kleine means small.
Bitte means please.
Nacht means night.
Kasekrainer means a spicy hot dog filled with cheese, then stuffed in a hole in a bun, whose hole is filled with ketchup and mustard.
Tafel means table.
Most of those are friends’ last names, which is why people know them. Kasekrainer is not a friend’s last name, but maybe should be a character’s last name? Joe Kasekrainer, who works at the DMV? Anyway, when I get off the plane in Berlin, I look forward to asking everybody where the small darling birds are, please, I would like to sit them at my table to eat spicy hot dogs filled with cheese.

I have a confession.

When I was in NY I found a jumper on the pavement.

It was my shopping in SoHo day and I was heading to a certain specific store that does a great range of key casual jumpers and tshirts manufactured in downtown LA, to buy a grey sweater. It was never less than 30 degrees when I was in NY but I hadn’t counted on the air con, especially in the rehearsal room.

I stepped out of another store and almost trod on exactly the sweater I was going to buy. In my size. I looked up and down the street. No-one. I chased a girl who was just rounding the next block and asked if it was hers. It wasn’t. I took it home.

I love it. It felt like my gift from the city.

6 weeks later and London is grey, humid and miserable. I am pining for NYC. Stephen Brown is back and we have arranged lunch for that day. I am walking across London Bridge as I do everyday, ipod on, head down, like every other commuter, when something on the ground catches my eye.

Something small and silver. It’s a Tiffany charm. The smallest heart. The second cheapest thing they sell – I bought the cheapest thing they sell for my friend and I double checked. The clasp is broken, which I guess is why it’s on the floor.

I look up, I look down. I am standing still in a stream of people pushing past me, heads down, ipods on. I hold it in my hand and wonder what to do. Nowhere to hand it into, I know it’s not worth much and it’s broken. I look closer at it.

‘If found please return to Tiffany & Co, New York’

I decide to follow the instructions.

My friends think I am crazy. That some receptionist will open it and pocket it or throw it into the pile with the other returned goods that the over romantic tourists have sent back. People keep telling me to keep it, get it fixed, wear it, or give it to them. Another gift from the city.

But I have a feeling about this. NYC has already been very kind to me and I would love it to be kinder still. Besides, these things come in 3s. Who knows what might be coming my way next…

Here in London the building I live in is clad in scaffolding and green plastic mesh. The sunlight entering my flat has a curious underwater quality. I sit at my desk hoping a wayward tuna will sail past my window, rather than the builders, who studiously avoid looking in.

My pace of life hasn’t slowed since returning from New York. I’ve spent three days showing my (six-and-three-quarters-years-old) niece around London (she liked the amphibious ‘Duck’ tour best); I’ve been up in Edinburgh at the Festival, seeing friends’ shows; then travelled north of Edinburgh to interview my friend Rory Stewart about his book on Iraq, which I am adapting for the stage.

In just over an hour I’m heading out to have lunch with Jacqui, author of Tell Out My Soul. Jacqui was the other British playwright in this year’s SPF, but as she was in the first week and I in the last we overlapped in New York for only a day. (Even so, we managed to share a drink in the Telephone Bar – yes, the one fronted with those red British telephone kiosks.) This is our first opportunity post-Festival to swap stories, compare notes, gossip.

When I last saw Jacqui it was the Saturday of her run and I’d just watched her beautiful, heart-searching play. She passed the British playwright baton on to me. (A metaphorical baton. There isn’t an actual baton.) You’ll have a great time, she said, and she was right. She’d had a terrific three weeks in New York and she was upset to be going, upset to be leaving so early in the Festival and leaving so many new friends. She remarked how odd it must be for me to meet her at that moment, and she was right about that too. It was like walking into a party and encountering a future version of yourself, already heading for the door.

Theatre people get used to the way in which shows come and go. Or they don’t. A live performance is like sex or pain or the taste of a good falafel sandwich: it only exists in the moment you experience it. My love affair with theatre sometimes feels like an addiction to these uncatchable moments.

Joanna and her team made such a fine production of Future Me: clean, fluent, subtle. I learnt a huge amount about my writing and about theatre from them. The show modulated and grew with each performance. The result was the most moving production of the play and the most naked.

I’ve already said and written my thank yous to all the people who worked on Future Me and to the SPF team, so I won’t make a list here. I include only a single big THANK YOU to everyone. You are talented, intelligent, supportive and tolerant. I hope very much that we’ll work together again. And have a plastic cup of caipirinha together. Or a glass of bourbon. Or a frozen mai tai.

I’m now at the British Library. I bumped into a friend who is also a writer and we spent an hour discussing how writers are great procrastinators. I’ve had lunch with Jacqui, which was excellent, and we both reminisced about New York. I told her about the parties and the shows she missed and she was even more annoyed. She’s leaving her job soon to concentrate on writing and directing: she is working on a new site-specific piece to be staged this November in the British Museum. It sounds great. (One of the loveliest things about SPF: the beginnings of friendships with the other writers.)

After such a hectic two months it feels good that I have nothing to do between now and Christmas except write. Talking to my friend Rory has re-energised me for the Iraq project: I think I’ve located the emotional heart of the story. Which is just as well, as I’m supposed to have a first draft done by early September. Then I’ll be rewriting that alongside working on my other commission, which is about a dog-trainer, her daughter and a dog.

How do shows come and go?

Well, that’s that.  Almost as quickly as it started, it ended.  But what a joyous ride we had.  In keeping with the spirit of the valedictory blog posts, here are my thanks:

Thank you, Caitlin Moon, for seeing all that my play could be the first time you read it well over a year ago, and then working like a jackrabbit to make sure it was all there in the little time we had to find it.  Thank you for the tenderness and the loving care with which you treated my play.  Thank you for making it your own without making me feel that it wasn’t still mine.  Thank you for your grace under pressure.  Thank you for making me have a cocktail when all I wanted to do was to go home.  Thank you for your true and valued friendship.

Thank you, Greg Graham, for taking a peek into my imagination and creating those fantastic dances.  Thank you for understanding my play.  Thank you for your enthusiasm and your leadership.  Thank you, most especially, for masterfully taking my black marks on the page and breathing life into them.

Thank you, Kelley Sheehan and Chuck Novatka, for your keen eyes and sharp observations.

Thank you, April Ortiz, for channeling (however highly fictionalized) my grandmother.  Thank you for giving Inez humor and dignity.  Thank you for connecting so completely with that precious photograph.  Thank you for always reminding me how much you love my play, both through your words and your performance.

Thank you, Benita Robledo, for wearing that outfit to your audition.  Thank you for never complaining about all those dishes and forks and glasses you had to set and clear and set and clear throughout rehearsals and performances.  Thank you knowing enough to grab center stage when it was yours to take.  Thank you for finding the softness and the growing toughness in Rebecca.

Thank you, Vaneik Echeverria, for always making me laugh and for always surprising me about a character I thought I knew pretty well.  Thank you for investing Francisco with swagger and pathos—two things that generally don’t go hand in hand but in your capable hands fit perfectly.

Thank you, Barrett Foa, for joining us late and taking about two seconds to catch up. Thank you for bringing such love and regret into the room every time you entered the stage.  Thank you for tapping back into your “chorus boy” days so effortlessly (or so it seemed).  Thank you for giving Jamie a lifetime of back story in just three scenes.

Thank you, Nathan Mendez, for your stunning, soulful and heartbreaking performance.  Thank you for showing me the depths of Alejandro’s sadness and the joy in his smile. Thank you for making me cry, not at my words, but at your tender handling of them.  Thank you for giving me the gift of Alejandro.

Thank you, Jason Kaminsky and Gabriel Gutierrez, for charging ahead and getting this done. Thank you for not being scared away by the mountains of work that stood before us at the start of the process.

Thank you, Sam, Nicki and Spencer for having fun and being utter professionals.

Thank you, Amanda Stephens, Aaron Spivey, Emily Pepper, Fitz Patton and Palmer Hefferton for making the play tangible and vibrant and for doing it all for less than my current credit card debt.

Thank you, Ariel Tepper-Madover, for the chance.

Thank you, Thom Clay and Sam Levy, for the support.  Thank you for sitting me down and explaining to me why you wanted me to do this.  Thank you letting us do it.

Thank you, Holly Ferguson, for the tickets, no matter how last minute the begging, pleading request came.

Thank you, Jennifer Taylor, for never getting too upset when my blog was late. Thank you, too, for letting me get you drunk on tequila.

Thank you, Jackie Leitzes, for teaching me that Jewish families and Puerto Rican families are not that far apart.

Thank you, Stephen Brown, for so graciously sharing your week with me.  Thank you for the absolute work of beauty that is Future Me.

Thank you, Erica Jensen, for creating this family and looking fabulous while you did it.

Thank you, my HBO colleagues, for your incredible support.

Thank you, Bruce Grivetti, for reminding me how much you really don’t need me but that it’s fun just to have me around, nonetheless.

Thank you, Lopez Family, for making me, raising me, loving me, inspiring me and supporting me.

Thank you, Seth Glewen, for believing in me and being my biggest fan.  Thank you for being much more than an agent.

And, finally, thank you, Brandon, for leaving the light on.

The old skylights of the gently curved ceiling have been cleaned and lit softly from behind. Red velvet curtains draw on motorized tracks backing the second level colonnades.
On the fourth side of the room, behind the stage, two of the classical columns have been stripped down to their iron shafts and made part of a supporting structure for lights, sound baffles, and a second-story catwalk.
All this ‘working equipment’ left bare and painted a deliberately contrasting black: modern structural ‘brutalism’ played against genteel Victorian propriety. It is a theatrical exercise in the esthetics of contrast, and it works. The theater has beauty and charm. It says a lot, in succinct architectural terms, of change and continuity in slightly more than a century - one of the most fascinating centuries in the history of the adventure called civilization.
From a New York Times feature by Ada Louise Huxtable, c. 1966-7

* * *

Oldest stage at the Public, The Anspacher Theater used to be Central Hall of the Astor Library, first free library in New York City which contained the Delivery Desk & Catalogues, Basic References, Patents Collection, Ladies’ Corner, and showcase of rarities (including the Gutenberg Bible). The original plans for the Public had them demolishing the room for an 800-seat theater, but Joe Papp decided against that in the end, because the room was too good as it was.

I read once that the magic of those Stradivarius violins is partially the kind of wood and resin they’re made of and partly a self-fulfilling prophecy having to do with history. Fine players pass the instruments down, one to the next, and the body of the instrument holds all the notes that have been played in it over time. Those notes, being vibrations, after all, will make the most imperceptible channels in the body of the instrument, infinitesimal, but still real, so it becomes easier for the instrument to make beautiful music the older it gets.

Even when art is invisible, it makes a real change on the objects of the earth.
It leaves a mark.
The instrument & the music are inseparable.

I wanted to but couldn’t find a list of all the plays that have played in that space. I know the first show in there ever was Hair in 1967. I know the first show I saw there was only recently – last year, Passing Strange, and I remember walking in, and getting struck dumb by that amazing tall space, those columns, that ceiling like a fairy tale, like “the evening sky” as the historians have put it, strange and dark and high. You imagine a ceiling like that collects the dust of all the plays that have passed through the theater, all the actors who have breathed and cried in that room, forty years of laughter, all the words repeated over and over with the run of each show, must gather somewhere in the space.

I watched Green Girl from the balcony level next to the stage manager most nights, hiding with the wires and the light board, bird’s eye view of the audience and the actors, up in that evening-sky ceiling, could hear the dull muffled thump of Sam Shepard’s horse next door and our SM, Dee whispering lighting cues, sound cues. That was my play, on its feet in New York. That was amazing. What a pleasure and an honor it has been to borrow the Anspacher.

Pepe opened on Tuesday and it has been quite a week.  We have all felt shot out of a cannon but now that we’re in the middle of the run (well, technically, near the end of it) everyone seems to have gotten their sea legs and the show is running smoothly.

Audiences have been very receptive and vocal.  Lots of laughter throughout then tears at the end.  I’ve even been able to watch the show and enjoy it, rather than hiding under my chair like I did in the first few performances.

The set looks amazing. It’s hard to believe we did it for $2,000 but we did. I know I sound like a broken record but it is such a thrill to see that which I have labored over for years in the silence of my home turn into something tangible and real.  It is such a thrill to be able to watch my play every night.

The pre-show ritual is quite a fun sight to see.  It consists of me and Caitlin standing in the lobby with our agent, waiting for our industry invitees to arrive.  Our agent then pulls us to and fro, making introductions.  Caitlin and I make regular no-food-in-the-teeth checks on each other and always remember to crunch on a couple of Altoids.

Indochine, which is across the street from The Public, has become the official Tio Pepe creative team hangout.  Caitlin and I were regulars there after most rehearsals and it was a good place to start the night on opening, numbing the nerves with a hearty dose of gin before we crossed the street to watch the first show.  It is also where Caitlin and I sat out Wednesday night’s show in order to unwind and have a private celebration with each other and our agent.  As we sat in one of the booths by the window, Caitlin looked at her watch, then looked across the street and said, “oh, we’re at intermission now. No one’s leaving the theatre and heading home. That’s a good sign.”

Indeed.  Pepe is finally on its dancing feet!

So it’s Wednesday, and I’m back in Palmetto, Florida. I’ve had a day and a half to wash a suitcase full of dirty clothes, scour a few sinks, vacuum the floors, and just get things back in order after three weeks away from my family. (They really did just fine without me, though.)
I keep hearing Dan Kluger’s music from The Ones That Flutter in my head. It plays on and on, and it’s the first time a song has been stuck in my head, and I’m enjoying it. I don’t really want it to ever stop. Thank you so much, Dan, for your brilliant sound design.
I hung Andrew Boyce’s drawing of the set in my office. I will cherish it forever. Thank you, Andrew, for allowing me to keep it. And thank you, Jared Fine and everyone else on Team Flutter, for such a thoughtful opening night gift. I absolutely love it! I look at it, and I think of the pictures on the shelves that faded in and out as time shifted in the play. Thank you for that beautiful touch, Andrew.
Christopher Studley, the first person I met on the design team, has a friendly face. I walked into that first rehearsal feeling a bit nervous and intimidated. But there was Chris at the table, and he just has an approachable way that made me feel at ease. His illumination of the words in the jail scene and at the end of the play are moments I’ll never forget. Thank you, Chris.
I see why people have a hard time getting in all their thank-yous on awards shows. So many people contribute so much to one show. I’m going to copy Billy Finnegan and start my list, hoping I don’t inadvertently leave anyone out.

Thank you, Dan Lauria, for learning so many lines and then re-learning them when cuts and changes were made. Thank you for introducing me to Joe Allens. Thank you for being so passionate about new plays.

Thank you, Danielle Skraastad, for coming along with me to the first party when I was too nervous to go alone. (I got over that real fast, didn’t I?) Thank you for being so bold as to walk up to Sam Shepard in Indochine and force him to meet me and shake my hand. I’ll never forget that moment. Thanks for being a friend to me in the big city.

Thank you, Chris Chalk, for being born.

Thank you, Julia Gibson, for being so funny. Whenever I see a lemon square I’ll think of you.

Thank you, Struan Erlenborn, for being such a cool kid and a terrific actor. I’ll be looking for you.

Thanks, Emily Rebholz, for dressing everyone exactly as they were supposed to be dressed.

Thank you, Kelly Brown, for being so zen. You were my human tranquilizer. Everyone could use a little dose of Kelly.

Thank you, April Bracken and Susannah Jones, for being so sweet and hard-working and reminding me of my daughters so that I missed them a little less. Susannah, you play a great abusive drunk man. And April, you make mashed potatoes sound fancy.

Thank you, Liz Frankel, for being so nice and such a wise dramaturg.

Thank you, Jackie Leitzes, for being my friend and showing me all the good places. Thank you for my beautiful pen. I hope I get to hang out with you again some day. You are a blast!

Thank you, Jen Taylor, for telling me my blogs were okay. (I guess I’m going on a bit long with this one, though.) I had so much fun with you.

Thank you, Holly, for being the ticket guru and such a friendly person.

Thanks to everyone on the SPF staff – Thom Clay, Sam Levy, Marty Pavloff, Scott Pegg, Laura Pietropinto. I’ll never forget the moment I heard your voice on my answering machine, Sam.

Huge, huge thanks and a great big hug to Jared Fine, the perfect fit for me in a line producer. You made everything wonderful. And you made me organized!

Thank you, Mark Barna, for being a great associate line producer. You are a calming presence as well.

And Stephen Brackett, my great director. Thank you for meeting me that first night I arrived in New York. You made life outside my comfort zone so much more comfortable. Thanks for the dinner. Thanks for the subway tutorial. Thanks for being you.

Finally, Arielle Tepper Madover. Thank you for generously starting this festival and allowing me to be a part of it. 

It’s 7pm, I’m sitting at the back of the technical rehearsal, and I’ve had to borrow the Assistant Producer’s power cable because my computer has run out of juice and I really MUST write a blog entry before Jen (SPF marketing supremo and blog-mistress) tells me I can’t have any more frozen mai tais in Chinatown Brasserie over the road from the Public Theater, and not just because last time we did that I ended up lying face down on the floor as part of an elaborate but alas now forgotten joke.

We’re nearing the end of what has been a brilliant, gruelling, exciting and all too short two-week rehearsal process, creating a production in the theatrical equivalent of one of those time-lapse films where a flower goes from bud to bloom in seconds. We did our first run, off book, on the afternoon of the fifth day, by which point God had managed to populate the air and the sea, an undoubtedly bigger achievement than ours, but still I think our first week was pretty extraordinary and we earned our seventh day of rest.

Week two we worked back through the script, cutting and rewriting as we went. Joanna – our brilliant director – has turned out to be a great dramaturg as well, chopping out ‘repeat beats’, having me start scenes without ‘throat-clearing’ and trimming away my occasional diminuendo scene endings, accentuating the script’s habit of beginning and ending scenes in mid-air. She has taught me a great deal about my writing along the way.

The cast have done exceptional work, giving life to the script at great speed and coping with the changes, and the need in this kind of process to rapidly attempt several different readings of a scene. For Aaron Lohr in particular, who is on stage for the entire two-hour play, it’s been an epic undertaking. (It helps that Aaron is an extraordinary line-learner. He arrived off book – I suspect he was born off book – and has then absorbed every line change more or less instantly.)

It’s been fascinating to see a great team of American actors working on this Americanized version of my originally British script. The stereotypical contrast between British and American acting has a fair amount of truth in it. The original London production of Future Me – with a great cast of British actors – was more focused on detail, restraint, the ‘head’, working from the outside in. The American cast drive from the inside out, feeling and reacting. They move more dynamically, conducting energy onto the stage. They have a directness that can at times, as Joanna put it ‘strip the flesh off your bones’. The American production has a physical aspect – a sense of suppressed violence – that I’ve not seen before.

So here we are then – it’s by now 7.45pm on Monday evening and we’re at the start of Act Two. We are testing out a spotlight for the opening scene. Tech rehearsals can be odd for writers, who sit there with nothing to do while their work is deconstructed. Indeed, they can be pretty trying for almost everyone involved, particularly as the evening wears on. But this one is running smoothly. The good humour of the entire team – particularly Joanna the director and Lisa, our super-capable stage manager – is keeping the mood buoyant.

The look and feel of the show is based on a few bold choices. Joanna said to me a couple of days ago: ‘I trust the words. You’ll find that I’ve put your script out there in front of the audience very directly.’ She was warning me not to be freaked out – there are no hiding places in this staging. But it was this clarity and courage that first attracted me to Joanna’s vision in the first place. Now that we are in the space, I can see exactly what she means. The show flows from scene to scene on the back of Stew’s haunting guitar music. There’s no fuss, no clutter, the colours and textures are clean. The actors are offered up to us: human beings struggling in an expanse of space. It’s beautiful.