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Playwrights Under Pressure: Part 2 of interview with OSLO playwright J.T. Rogers

3/27/2017

J.T. Rogers’s much talked-about drama OSLO makes visible the secret negotiations—between determined Norwegian diplomats and political hawks and doves from Israel and Palestine—that led to the Oslo Peace Accords. It was workshopped at Philadelphia’s PlayPenn conference, one of America’s most important and intensive play development conferences, and began previews on Broadway at the Lincoln Center Theater, March 23, 2017.

In this second of a two-part interview (read part one), Henrik Eger talks to Rogers about his play and its development.

J.T. Rogers's OSLO

Henrik Eger: If there were moments when your play moved into a different direction than you had anticipated, how did you handle feedback and any possible misunderstandings?

J.T. Rogers: Watching the second reading at PlayPenn, I realized, “At least half of act three has to go. The climax of the play is earlier than you thought. After that, you get less than 10 pages till ‘curtain.’ Get the red pen, Rogers.”

Henrik Eger: What do you think your main characters would say about being looked over and reviewed extensively by theater experts at the PlayPenn conference?

J.T. Rogers: The main characters in my play, Oslo, are a young, dashing Norwegian couple named Mona Juul and Terje Rød-Larsen. Mona would be reserved, cards held close to her chest, cannily watching those who watch her, waiting to see what they were seeing before she engaged with them. Terje would wrap the lot of them up in his arms, pour everyone enormous vodka martinis, and press the flesh in the very best Bill Clinton style.

Larsen has since seen the play in NYC, and told me personally that he was very pleased. Juul will see it when it transfers to Broadway.

Henrik Eger: While the serious workshop work might have been stressful at times, were there funny, perhaps even hilarious, moments?

J.T. Rogers: We got done with our final rehearsal before our first public reading at exactly the second we had to stop—all of us shaking and charged from racing as deep into the play as we could, so we could have as much covered as we could before sharing it with the audience. Then we collectively looked at the script, realizing we had only been able to rehearse 40 pages—out of 140. The room burst into giddy laughter. “Fuck it! We’ll just wing the rest of it, right?”

Henrik Eger: As a PlayPenn playwright, how has your participation in this intensive workshop series changed the way you might handle challenging situations differently in the future?

J.T. Rogers: This workshop couldn’t have come at a better time for me as a writer. Playwrights--anywriter, at any stage in their careers—are constantly dealing with rejection and self-doubt. The best way to ward off these “blue devils” is to be given the gift of total immersion, with a strict deadline at the end. Three weeks of structured time when I was to do nothing but write this one play, while knowing people were waiting to hear and see it when I got through the tunnel? I mean, come on! Your muscles and your mind are firing as one, not just during, but for long after those three weeks are over.

PlayPenn conference

All’s Well that Playwrights Well: Beyond PlayPenn

Henrik Eger: Since 2005, PlayPenn has helped bring about 100 plays to a state they cautiously call “closer to production-readiness.” How close do you consider your play to be to that state? And what are the next steps you have taken to get it produced?

J.T. Rogers: I was very fortunate with Oslo in that LCT [Lincoln Center Theater, NYC] had (unofficially) committed to it before I arrived at PlayPenn. So my focus was to get the play ready for a production with a set date, rather than work on a play with the hopes of it one day getting a production.

Henrik Eger: What has become of your work overall as a playwright since the PlayPenn conference?

J.T. Rogers: Plans are in the works for an earlier play of mine to have a revival in NYC. I’ve also started research for a new play—long way to go, but promising.

Henrik Eger: Where do you see yourself now in this process of becoming an even stronger playwright than before?

J.T. Rogers: I think the biggest change is that I understand how to use the tools of my profession better. I am a much better craftsman than I was when I started out. And more and more and more, I believe that if we write and write and write, when we take care of the craft, the art takes care of itself. As Arthur Miller once put it, “It’s not spelled ‘playwright” like “boatwright” [boat builder] for nothing.”

Henrik Eger: What have you discovered about yourself through the PlayPenn process—not only as a playwright, but as a mensch?

J.T. Rogers: I don’t step out of my own skin much and look back at “me,” as I don’t find “me” to be that interesting. I live with “me” every second I’m not writing, so isn’t it nice to be able to be someone else who’s not “me” when I am writing?

But years ago my brother sent me a letter from rural North Ghana where he was living in a village studying fiddle music. In it he wrote, “Our job is to create the greatest possible expression of ourselves as human beings before we die.”

I’d add many other things now to a Grand Statement about an artist’s life and work, but that line—with its mixture of ego and humility—has stayed with me. I kept thinking of it as I worked at PlayPenn. Each time, I’d shake my head and smile.

Henrik Eger: What advice do you have for the next generation of playwrights?

J.T. Rogers: The American theater is chock full of inward looking plays that fester over small, personal family dramas (and an “avant-garde” take on this theme is just a new dress on an old horse), which exist as if they have no connection to the larger, more complex world we all actually live in.

Three specific suggestions:

Instead of going to graduate school, save that money and travel to see the world and expand yourideas and vision as a citizen and artist.
Well, obviously, write and read, and see as much theater as you can.
Set a routine and write daily—even if it’s only for 10 minutes. Work and routine begets art and energy and focus.

Henrik Eger: What’s the latest Oslo news—an extraordinary play that integrates Norwegian, Arabic, German, and Hebrew?

J.T. Rogers: Oslo ran in the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center Theater last summer]. After its sold-out run, it’s now transferring upstairs to LCT’s Beaumont Theater, where performances start March 23. How amazing is that?

Henrik Eger: Many thanks and congratulations, J.T. Rogers. Mange takk. تشكرات. Vielen Dank. הרבה תודות.

[Vivian Beaumont Theater, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, 50 Lincoln Center Plaza #1, New York, NY] Previews begin March 23, 2017; lct.org

This interview was originally published by Phindie on March 27, 2017.

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Opening Doors, No Matter What: OSLO playwright J.T. Rogers talks about the evolution of a new world classic, developed at PlayPenn (part 1)

3/21/2017

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J.T. Rogers’s much talked-about drama OSLO makes visible the secret negotiations—between determined Norwegian diplomats and political hawks and doves from Israel and Palestine—that led to the Oslo Peace Accords. It was workshopped at Philadelphia’s PlayPenn conference, one of America’s most important and intensive play development conferences, which accepts fewer than 1% of all playwrights who apply. The work begins previews on Broadway at the Lincoln Center Theater, March 23, 2017.

Henrik Eger talks to Rogers about his play and its development in the first of this two-part interview (read part one here).

J.T. Rogers

Henrik Eger: How did you come up with the concept for OSLO?

J.T. Rogers: Terje Rød-Larsen, then special representative to the UN Secretary General for Lebanon came to see [Roger’s 2011 drama] Blood and Gifts at Lincoln Center Theater. Afterwards, over drinks, I learned of the secret history of the Oslo Accords, which were conceived and overseen by [Norway’s] Larsen and his wife, diplomat Mona Juul, when they were both young and completely unknown on the world stage. As I learned the details and I asked more and more questions—I realized, I had my next play.

Henrik Eger: Describe the stages that your script went through, from your very first draft to the version that you submitted to PlayPenn.

J.T. Rogers: For me, without deadlines there is no art. I knew I had to have enough pages written by the PlayPenn submission deadline that, when I did submit, they would see there was enough of a play there to take my application seriously. I kept working on the play and, when I was accepted, I brought most of a full draft, which I finished, and refined during my three-week residency.

Henrik Eger: If you have taken other play development workshops, what made them different from your PlayPenn experience?

J.T. Rogers: The only professional new play development conference I’ve worked at is PlayPenn (as opposed to The O’Neill, Sundance, etc.). After being at three different PlayPenn conferences, it’s hard to imagine working in this way anywhere else.

Collaborative Process

Henrik Eger: Many theater-goers seem to know little about the important work of dramaturgs. Could you describe the input on your work by your dramaturg, Heather Lester?

J.T. Rogers: Until the middle of the last century, dramaturgy was part of the European theater process—originally German, I think—wherein a dramaturg assisted the director and actors in boring deeply into the history and culture of the play they were undertaking. Keep in mind that new, “serious” plays going fresh from page to stage fell out of favor for a long time in Europe. So, having a living playwright around to do this work for the director and cast wasn’t happening.
In the US, in the last 20 years or so, dramaturgy has expanded so that many new plays now have a dramaturg in the room at all times—commenting, giving script ideas, writing suggestions, etc.—akin to having a second director. I don’t work this way. By my lights, to put it plainly, this kind of work is writing the play, full stop. And that is to be done by the author, with input from the director. Full stop.

For me, this workshop at PlayPenn was the first time I’ve had a full-time, always-in-the-room dramaturg on any play, at any stage, of mine. So, at first, I was a bit at a loss on how to take advantage of “my” dramaturg’s considerable talents. But, Heather Lester proved to be Old School as well as New. She was able to get name pronunciations to all the actors and, most crucially, to get all the lines in the play in Hebrew, Arabic, German, and Norwegian translated and into the hands of the cast. This was immensely helpful. With only 39 hours to rehearse, we didn’t have to spend precious time in the room going over these things.

Henrik Eger: What impact did Tyne Rafaeli, your PlayPenn director, have on the way you rewrote parts of your script?

J.T. Rogers: I’ve not worked with a more ferociously committed theater collaborator than Tyne Rafaeli. Over the three weeks we spent joined at the hip, I almost never slept as I wrote and rewrote and wrote and rewrote—but she never slept. She would rehearse the actors nonstop. Then she and I would sit down with the script and knock things about for hours and hours. Then, she would race back to NYC where she was in charge of putting in the new leads in one of the biggest Broadway shows going. Thenshe would race back to Philly to start the process all over again. Not once did her work suffer from fatigue as she relentlessly pressed me with excellent questions.

Henrik Eger: Tell us about your work with the actors, especially anything they said or did that might have helped you in reshaping parts of your play or perhaps rephrasing something.

J.T. Rogers: To give an example of the wonderful work of the actors in my workshop, David Ingram played the lead role of Larsen (he was also, superbly, the lead in my PlayPenn workshop of The Overwhelming ten years before). After the reversal-filled opening scene, Larsen turns to us and delivers a speech—that I rewrote and rewrote endlessly, to the point where I was beginning to question its necessity. As soon as David started working on it, I said to myself, “Right. It works. It needs more tweaking—but it works.” David’s intelligence took the lines where they needed to go.

Henrik Eger: Among playwrights in North America, both Paul Meshejian and Michele Volansky are legendary for nurturing new plays.

J.T. Rogers: Absolutely. They invited me to come to Philly and put me in charge of my own play. “We trust you. Write and write and write and see how far you can take it.” What a simple, powerful edict.

J.T. Rogers (in hat). PlayPenn group photo by John Flak.

Playing at PlayPenn

Henrik Eger: One of the PlayPenn goals is to “provide as many resources and remove as many obstacles as possible.”

J.T. Rogers: The Playwright’s weekend before the conference gives the writers and directors in-depth, intimate time together—helping us to become a community of theater artists, all sharing the same goal for the coming workshops.

Henrik Eger: Could you tell us a bit about your experience with Wil Kauffman, your intern?

J.T. Rogers: Wil is a sharp, gifted young writer, who I’m still in touch with a year plus after PlayPenn. I can’t wait to see where his writing and theater making takes him.

Henrik Eger: Each of your plays was given two public readings with professional actors. How much did that process shape Oslo?

J.T. Rogers: The first reading allowed the actors to get a sense of how the play played, and to realize that which they did not yet understand. It allowed me to have a deadline to meet (more pages!) and to hear what I needed to fix for the second reading.

Henrik Eger: Overall, how would you describe the PlayPenn process and its impact on your play?

J.T. Rogers: The support and care you get at PlayPenn are tremendous. The “insight” I’ve gained each time I’ve been there has been: trust yourself and write and write. It sounds obvious, but in the heat of it, it’s hard to lose sight of that.

read part 2 of this interview >>>

[Vivian Beaumont Theater, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, 50 Lincoln Center Plaza #1, New York, NY] Previews begin March 23, 2017; lct.org

This interview was originally published by Phindie on March 21, 2017.

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Beyond PlayPenn: Former conference interns come into their own, part 3

3/8/2017

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Phindie fully supports the work done at PlayPenn, one of America’s much talked about development centers for up and coming playwrights and their new dramas. Each summer, PlayPenn provides opportunities for six interns to spend three weeks with some of the most promising North American playwrights who come to Philadelphia for the concentrated writing and re-writing conference.

In the third part of this this three-part interview (see parts one and two), we learn about the professional and creative experiences of three students since they completed their work at PlayPenn: Anita Castillo-Halvorssen, Jillian (Jilly) Schwab, and Patrick Ross (bios at footer). For information on how to apply for an internship, which has launched the careers of quite a few young theater people, visit playpenn.org. Application deadline for this year’s conference is April 1, 2017.

Interns at PlayPenn

Beyond PlayPenn

Henrik Eger: Now that you have completed the PlayPenn internship, how do you see yourself as a young professional?

Anita Castillo-Halvorssen: I feared that if I asked for opportunities to hone my skills in the arts, I would fail in some way, and let down those who had trusted me to accomplish what I had set out to do. Now I am confident that being a young professional is about ignoring those fears, putting myself openly at risk for failure, and having faith in myself—enough to know that I will ask for help when I need it, and that maybe I know more than I think I do.

Patrick Ross: I’ve expanded my ideas about what I’m willing to do for work. Before PlayPenn, I wanted jobs that would support writing, but now I’ve realized that I’d much rather be working in the theater: acting, assistant directing, stage managing, and house managing—whatever it may be. I simply want to be around the people that make art. They are the best.

Henrik: Has your experience strengthened your desire to work in theater-related fields, or did it have the opposite effect?

Put another way, what are the next steps you want to take in your career? Tell us more about your new resolve.

Patrick: I spent the month of June, between my graduation from Swarthmore and the PlayPenn internship, sort of languishing in adulthood. The PlayPenn internship demonstrated to me that being a professional theatre artist is not only a possible option in Philadelphia, but a very viable one. Elaina Di Monaco was a PlayPenn intern a few years ago, and now she’s back at the conference as a dramaturg. Seeing young professionals like her, who are not so much older than me, really galvanized me to embrace this lifestyle.

Before PlayPenn, I was looking for boring, full-time office jobs—something to support my writing, which I do alone, because I don’t really have the resources for a theatre career. I’ve realized now that I do have those resources: I have friends and ideas, and that’s all it takes. It was wonderful to figure that out.

Anita: My next steps are to travel and be in greater contact with artists around the country and the globe, so that I can start to get a feel for many unique theater communities. I have resolved that I want to be telling, and helping others, tell new stories—stories that we don’t otherwise have a chance to hear. If I do that through dramaturgy, theater direction, film production, or even acting, I will be happy.

Henrik: As a PlayPenn intern, how has your participation in this intensive workshop series changed the way you might handle challenging situations differently in the future?

Patrick: I’m a writer, so I’m used to rejection. I’ve probably been rejected thousands of times by employers, editors, women . . . I’ve got thick skin, which is a blessing. I think it’s because I grew up a disciple of J.K. Rowling, like so many writers of my generation. We grew up believing that perseverance will prevail, and that rejection is merely an interim state. I suppose it was refreshing to see brilliant artists’ ideas be rejected as well—it was a useful reminder that it’s rarely personal.

Anita: I am constantly learning how not to take criticism personally. I watched these playwrights bravely bare not only their imagined worlds, but also their personal experiences in front of all of us – welcoming our feedback.

Jilly Schwab: Self-doubt and I are very good friends now. It’s always going to follow me, but I’m finding better methods of channeling it. The same goes for handling rejection. I keep expectations low, and am receptive to change.

Henrik: When you look back at your life as an evolving professional, where do you see yourself now in this process of becoming an even stronger person in the academic and/or work world than before?

Anita: Because of PlayPenn, I am now beginning to understand that to do what I want not only requires skill and vision, but also trust.

Patrick: At the end of the conference, [director] Tyne Rafaeli sat me down and gave me a pep talk. She gave me some of the best advice I’ve gotten. If you want to live in the UK, she said, go now, and spend your twenties there. Work in a bar. Read everything you can. Write everything you can. And see all the £5 theater you can.

And that sparked a new line of thinking for me. Why get an MFA in Playwriting when I’m already a playwright? Go for an MA in Medieval Literature or something—or skip grad school entirely—and learn about something else, anything else—then write plays about it.

Henrik: What advice do you have for the next generation of interns on how to strengthen their skills and grow in the process as members of a professional team with fellow interns, writers, dramaturgs, directors, actors, other theatre artists—and audience members who could be writers, board members, donors, etc.?

Patrick: Talk to everyone, not just your team. Connect with the other playwrights and directors and actors as much as possible. Oh, and don’t bother Paul.

Anita: Learn everyone’s names. I almost wish I had taken time out to study all the names I came across—even, or perhaps, especially the donors’. It feels good to be remembered.

Jilly: Get yourself out of that office and talk to folks! Probe some minds, pick some brains. It’s a diverse pool of people coming together for the thrill of new work, so you already have something in common. Keep in touch with the people you meet and get to know what they’re working on. Also, being an intern does not mean you are insignificant.

Henrik: Given your wide-ranging experience during the intensive workshop sessions, which aspect of the theater world interested you the most, especially in terms of your own professional development?

Patrick: I was very interested in Lucie Tiberghien, who directed White. She directs mostly new work, which is a path I had never properly considered. How fulfilling it must be to go from project to project, and to collaborate with a living playwright every time? I am a Shakespeare devotee, but this internship did make me reconsider, at least to some extent, the value of producing him.

During one of our company conversations, David Jacobi said something that really resonated with me: “Playwrights are the only professionals in the world who lose jobs to dead people.” I think he’s really onto something there. Every time I advocate for a production of Macbeth, am I putting myself out of a job? Do I really want theaters to outsource my product to the deceased?

Anita: I have interest in being a new play dramaturg because of the burden I can lift from the playwrights’ shoulders when I provide them with context that might otherwise have bogged them down, while additionally assisting them in tightening and strengthening the narrative.

Patrick Ross with a script by James Ijames at PlayPenn, 2015. PlayPenn. Photo by John Fleck

Surprise Ending

Henrik: How do you see your personal development, not as a student or an intern, but as a human being? Overall, what have you learned about yourself as a mensch?

Patrick: PlayPenn offers the interns a truly incredible opportunity by hosting a reading of our ten-minute plays, performed by the professional actors already at the conference. We weren’t given much time to write these plays, either, which meant that I was writing from the gut, not the brain. My previous work had been pretty heady—usually history plays, with intellectualist concepts. I didn’t have time to concoct a concept for this play, so I wrote something ridiculous in a few hours—and I think it landed. At least, three people told me it did, and you remember what I said about threes . . . It was great to realize that my voice is more complex than I thought, and I’m going to explore the comedy route a bit more.

Jilly: In younger years of my mensch-hood, I was frequently trying to step out and examine myself as objectively as I could. It turned out to be a bad habit. If I viewed my accomplishments and my creative development from any angle other than my subjective experience, it would be a cloudy sight, but now, I like the messy parts of myself that haphazardly put together my identity.

Henrik: I greatly appreciate your responses. Thank you, one and all. May your reports encourage other students and graduates to apply for upcoming internships at PlayPenn. Contact me when your own plays get performed on stages in Philadelphia, all over the US, and perhaps even overseas—one day soon.

Biographical updates of the three PlayPenn interns

Anita Castillo-Halvorssen

Anita Castillo-Halvorssen: Graduate of Swarthmore College, BA in Film & Media Studies and Theater. Since working with PlayPenn, I enjoyed life in Colorado while assisting Landlocked Films with documentary projects and LOCAL Theater Company (“Fiercely committed to new American stories”) with a new production. I am currently a graduate student at Brown University, where I am pursuing an MFA at Trinity Repertory Company’s acting conservatory.

Jilly Schwab. Photo by Andrew Gowen, 2016.

Jillian (Jilly) Schwab: I graduated summa cum laude from Arcadia University with a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts. After that, I had the privilege of working with a fantastic team of Philly artists in a play called NIP at the Fringe Festival last summer. It was a big push in theatre-making that made me branch out to a flow arts practice with object manipulation and setting up a fine arts studio in Manayunk.

Patrick Ross. Photo by Jacques-Jean Tiziou

Patrick Ross: I graduated from Swarthmore College in 2015. My BA was in Theater and English Literature, with Honors (Phi Beta Kappa). I have worked in Philadelphia at Christ Church Neighborhood House and Lantern Theater Company. Currently, I am the Writing and Research Specialist at The Wilma Theater. During the presidential election, I wrote a weekly history-play-in-progress called Hillary the First. My play Scarlet Letters appeared in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, where it was named a DCMetroTheaterArts 2016 Fall Favorite.

This interview was originally published by Phindie on March 8, 2017.

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Under the wing of America’s most promising playwrights: PlayPenn interns speak, part 2

3/5/2017

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Like many of the playwrights at the PlayPenn Conference, PlayPenn interns make major breakthroughs in the theater world after their involvement at the playwriting conference. Interns participate in a playwright’s workshop led by a professional playwright, culminating in the public presentations of their own plays, performed by conference artists. For more details, visit playpenn.org and apply by April 1, 2017.

In this three-part interview, Henrik Eger spoke to previous conference interns Anita Castillo-Halvorssen, Jillian (Jilly) Schwab, and Patrick Ross.

Shelley Butler and Patrick Ross at PlayPenn. Photo by John Flak.

Playing at PlayPenn

Henrik Eger: One of the PlayPenn goals is to “provide as many resources and remove as many obstacles as possible.”

Jilly Schwab: The production team, including designers, dramaturgs, and directors, are steadfast in their commitment to the playwright. Very often, they would meet with their playwright after rehearsals to further a certain discussion or work on a problem encountered during rehearsal—anything to help the playwright tweak the work as concisely as possible.

AnitaCastillo-Halvorssen: PlayPenn’s designers are continually at work throughout the conference. Regarding my previous mention of David Jacobi’s design obstacles--The Widower design meeting was exhilarating in that each designer had clearly asked themselves, and each other, as many questions as possible about potential design obstacles that may arise out of the text. They succeeded in blasting away every one of them with the power of imagination and thorough research. Their skills were creative resources that the team could tap into to gain a whole new outlook on the play’s direction.

Patrick Ross: I think the free breakfast spread was one of the best resources we offered. Bagels and fruits of all colors, and free coffee and tea all day. Two weeks out, and Eric Pfeffinger is still tweeting about the bagels. I once saw Ellen Struve wander in just for a banana. It sounds so silly, but PlayPenn provided a place where the playwrights felt taken care of.

They didn’t have to worry about making breakfast. They could focus on writing.

Henrik: Could you tell us more about your experience with your playwright?

Jilly: Genne [Murphy] was endlessly inspiring for me.She knows what resonated, what needed more clarification, and what to stay true to. I’m always intrigued when a playwright has no problem with “killing [their] darlings,” as the adage goes.

Anita: David [Jacobi] pulled me aside one day after rehearsal and asked, “Is there a reason you are being quiet?” In spite of my silence, somehow he could tell that I’m not really the “quiet” type. When the interns arrived at PlayPenn, Paul and Michele encouraged us to spend our energy listening and observing, rather than calculating how best to express our thoughts to a whole group of artistic professionals.

By adopting this method, I was already learning so much from my team members that I hardly noticed that I wasn’t expressing myself enough to those who would appreciate my feedback—in this case, David. From then on, if I ever had burning questions, thoughts, or emotions bubbling up about Widower, David and I would use our lunch breaks to discuss the text and all it can do.

Patrick: James Ijames is a virtuoso and a gentleman. He invented some of the play’s cleverest lines on the spot. It takes someone truly talented to write like that. He was also very receptive to my voice in the room and invited me to speak. I’m grateful for that, because it made me feel like a real contributor to the process and to the play itself.

Henrik: Overall, how would you describe the PlayPenn process and its impact on your professionalism? What were some of the best insights you gained from the PlayPenn team?

Anita: Dramaturg Elaina Di Monaco assured me that more experienced professionals will often be thinking the same thoughts as the interns. Yet, the playwrights understand how best to articulate these thoughts efficiently and respectfully. This was the most significant learning process I underwent at PlayPenn.

Patrick: I took to slipping Elaina notes with my thoughts, so she could determine the appropriate time to bring them up. Timing is everything: a great idea at the wrong time can be a travesty. That was a very interesting and crucial lesson for me.
Overall, PlayPenn impressed upon me the importance of the team. When everyone has the interests of the play at heart, and not their own professional ambitions, magic happens.

Jilly: I had the tremendous opportunity to work with PlayPenn since the winter of last year, so I got a larger sense of their operations. From the playwright application process, to casting, to Conference, the process puts the playwright at the helm.

Before the conference began, I also read a few of the semi-finalist plays. It was quite an education to see how many scripts PlayPenn receives each year. I felt I read with more careful attention and with a better eye for a script’s potential [than before].

PlayPenn facilitates pure focus on the writing itself, while also understanding fluctuations in development. I think the best insight I’ve gained is being versatile, open to change, and being ready to start from square one if need be.

Interns at the 2015 PlayPenn Conference. Photo by John Flak.

Under the Microscope

Henrik: Could you give some examples where you saw the PlayPenn team “executing all of [their] activities with honesty and directness”?

Ross: When offering critiques, the PlayPenn rule is to baldly request permission first: “I have a suggestion about Balkonaé’s personality in Scene 2, would you like to hear it?” It is the playwright’s prerogative to accept or deny.

Jilly: When it came to the plays themselves, I was almost taken aback by that same directness. For example, a few of the plays were structured with jumps in time. Tracking the meat of the story was difficult at times, and there was no shame or coyness in pointing out a gap in the plot.

Anita: The best example I have is from actors, who constantly ask the playwright, “Why does the character do that?” Sometimes, the response to this question has no concrete answer, but their hunger for a dramaturgical logic in the text helps playwrights think further about the rules of the worlds they have crafted.

Henrik: If there were moments where your role as an intern moved into a different direction than you had anticipated, how did you handle any possible misunderstandings, and how did they impact the perception of yourself and your actions within a fast-paced environment?

Jilly: Here’s where that “naïve intern” stigma lies! The other interns and I discussed this a few times. I definitely consider myself embryonic amongst these amazing professionals. I think my acknowledgment of that helped. I simply haven’t acquired the experience yet to comment as constructively to the process. The pacing of the environment was helpful in that there simply wasn’t time to mull over every time I made a mistake.

Anita: In the middle of my time with PlayPenn, I felt I wasn’t doing enough for the Widower team. I felt confused about my role in the rehearsal room, and wondered what more I could do within the collaborative process. Michele [Volansky] guided me through that feeling, reminding me that some processes don’t always require what we hope they require of us as team members. Sometimes, the development process asks us solely to be a supportive presence throughout.

Patrick: There was one terrifically idiotic suggestion I made—I don’t remember the details, unfortunately—but it was neither ridiculed nor lambasted. James [Ijames] simply said, “Hmmm, don’t think so,” and we moved on.

Henrik: While the intensive work might have been stressful at times, were there any funny moments?

Jilly: My favorite was the playwriting master class with Lauren Feldman. The free-writing and ten minute plays that we created unlocked much about ourselves to one another. We got glimpses of what each of us has in our creative and crazy minds. That was a privilege.

Anita: Our workshops with [playwright] Lauren Feldman always took place very late in the evening, sometimes running until past 10 PM. The interns were often a little giddy with fatigue under these circumstances, so whenever Lauren asked us to read a humorous text aloud as a group, we usually found it extra humorous. A favorite moment from these loopy times is the night we read aloud Wil Kauffman’s short intern play, Match Made In. Even Wil was laughing hysterically at his own jokes. Our intern team was brilliantly funny.

Patrick: If you saw White, you know that there’s a minimum of one joke per page in that play, and usually more. We never stopped laughing at those jokes, mostly because James didn’t. And better yet, the actors consistently reinvented the humor. Joniece Abbott-Pratt is an inspired performer. She even twisted James’s jokes until they were ungodly funny.

This interview was originally published by Phindie on March 5, 2017.

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Interning PlayPenn, part 1: What theater students do behind the scenes of the playwriting conference

3/1/2017

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PlayPenn is one of America’s most important play development conferences. Many of the playwrights featured in the three week conference have gone on to produce major regional works.

Each year, the conference invites six interns—writers, performers, and technicians--to work alongside experienced professionals to experience playwriting, dramaturgy, directing, producing, etc. in a concentrated and fulfilling environment in Philadelphia. On a daily basis, each intern assists a collaborative team in the development of one of six plays whose playwrights have been invited to the conference. Interns also assist in the administrative, front of house, technical, and public relations responsibilities of the conference.

Interns participate in a playwright’s workshop led by a professional playwright, culminating in the public presentations of their own plays, performed by conference artists. For more details, visit playpenn.org and apply by April 1, 2017.
In this three-part interview, Henrik Eger spoke to previous conference interns Anita Castillo-Halvorssen, Jillian (Jilly) Schwab, and Patrick Ross. As we find, the conference can be a stepping stone for assistants as well as the playwrights they help.

PlayPenn 2016. Interns are crucial in the functioning of this prestigious conference.

Henrik Eger: Tell us about your background with theater arts.

Patrick Ross: It was all very accidental. When I was a high school sophomore, the theater teacher stopped me in the hallway—a woman I had never met—and demanded I sign up for her class. I was hesitant, my only previous performance having been as a very reluctant Joseph in the St. Mary’s Preschool Nativity Pageant—so I declined. The class was full anyway. She then did something I believe was illegal, and ejected a student from the class and inserted me without my permission.

She gets a “special thanks” in all my programs now.

My first performance was in her production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as Peter Quince. I acted throughout high school, and continued acting when I arrived at Swarthmore College—where I graduated to Demetrius. I soon discovered that I enjoyed directing more, so I began to do that, and ended up devising and writing the plays I was directing. I’m still growing into it, but I think I’m settling into the identity of a director-playwright, and definitely as a creator of new work.

Jilly Schwab: I did everything and anything I could, performance-wise. My family is very creatively inclined, and my two siblings and I were thrown into music and performance from a tiny age. I was a good little liar when I was younger, and my parents definitely knew.

I attended Rider University as a Musical Theatre Major and it was a difficult adjustment. For the first time, I confronted the reality of making a career out of theatre arts and it rocked my then-18 year old brain at the time. I sort of became disillusioned. I had to make a choice, and chose to continue my performance track. I took some time off from college and resumed closer to home at Arcadia University. Through my professors, I began to integrate into the Philly theatre community and learn self-sufficiency in becoming a theatre artist.

Anita Castillo-Halvorssen: My first serious role was Anna in Landford Wilson’s Burn This during my second year at Swarthmore, and I was worried I would be way in over my head. Jeannette Leopold, my director, gave me simple instructions: “It’s there in the text. You don’t need to force anything. Anna will come out of you, and who you are.” I quickly realized that the college’s approach to theater is an immensely practical one. The department strives to ensure that students graduate with a knowledge of theater history and theory, especially of the 20th Century, in order to understand what artists have discovered about storytelling and performance forms through ancient traditions from around the globe.

Henrik: How did you find out about PlayPenn?

Patrick: Word of mouth. Three of my supervisors at the Lang Performing Arts Center—where I work as an overhire technician—all recommended PlayPenn to me, separately of each other. There’s that rule for writers—if just one person makes a critique, you can safely ignore it; if three people tell you to do something, they’re probably right.
Jilly: After a scene-study class, Kathryn Petersen, one of those lovely life-mentors of mine, mentionedthe PlayPenn internship program. I jumped on it immediately.

Henrik: What attracted you to PlayPenn, so much so that you applied for the position as an intern?

Jilly: I was impressed by the number of plays [developed at PlayPenn] that had reached production on a national scale. At the time I was researching this project, I had the privilege of taking a playwriting class with Larry Loebell. The class took on a very collaborative dynamic and improved my own writing in such a way that I wanted more opportunities to seek out that same kind of dynamic. I found that quality with PlayPenn.

Anita: To work for PlayPenn seemed enormously attractive to me, simply because I knew I would have some role in helping new stories be heard. Even if that role were to be “give the artists coffee” or “take out the artists’ trash,” I knew it would be special to be in a room filled with these playwrights, sharing their feedback and ideas with one another.

Patrick: I had seen James Ijames act before and knew him as a formidable voice. I was impressed that it was writers of his caliber who were participating in this conference. When I saw that James was one of the playwrights involved, I knew it was going to be good.

Rehearsal for WHITE by James Ijames, PlayPenn 2015. Patrick Ross sits rear, center.
Photo by John Flak.

Collaborative Process

Henrik:What were the main tasks that you were asked to do?

Anita: The tasks that stood out to me were to do each playwrights’ stage directions justice by reading them clearly and engagingly at public showings, to keep actors and team members up-to-date on line changes and new page additions each day, and to generally be a supportive and respectful warm body in the rehearsal room. Another task that I appreciated was assisting dramaturg Heather Helinsky with Norwegian translations for JT Rogers’s Oslo, and recording audio tracks to help actors practice pronunciation of lines in Norwegian.

Patrick: Artistically speaking, each intern was assigned to a play, where we operated essentially as assistant dramaturgs. We were primarily tasked to observe.

Henrik: You were assigned to work with one playwright and his or her team. Tell us about your observations seeing professionals work with each other.

Anita: I was pleasantly surprised to find that PlayPenn really is about the playwright’s vision of the play. It is about the playwright’s hopes to tell a story truthfully, whatever that means to them. David Jacobi [writer of Widower] often mentioned what is possible on stage in a technical and logistical sense. [Director] Anne Marie [Cammarato] gently reminded him to forget all that, and remember that design will be the designers’ responsibility. His responsibility is to tell the story. She even requested that actors focus on reading their scripts, and less on acting them, during rehearsals and public showings—because we want to show the audiences the ability of the text to make them feel, not necessarily of the actors’ talents.

Henrik: PlayPenn prides itself on the “ferociouscommitment to the collaborative process” of everyone involved. Could you give an example or two where you saw this commitment in action?

Anita: In the Widower rehearsal room, David [Jacobi] might wonder about something a child would do or feel in a specific situation—as Widower’s protagonist is a twelve-year-old boy. Anthony Flamminio, as a Philadelphia actor of about the same age, could then answer the question honestly.

Patrick: Well, the White rehearsal room [the new play by James Ijames] was collaborative heaven. All voices were heard and really valued in that room—even mine.

Henrik: In North America, both Paul Meshejian and Michele Volansky are legendary for nurturing new plays. What was it like working with them and learning from them directly?

Anita: At first, Paul scared me half to death—and he is probably aware of that. He’s a no-funny-business kind of person, and he needs his collaborators to earn his trust in their ability to take this work seriously. But Paul is also very open and charismatic, which he demonstrated particularly when I had the chance to work with him as the intern for Rick Dresser’s War Stories. He knows that personal stories are crucial in understanding a text. He, and others in the artistic team, including Rick, would often tell stories that gave us deeper perspective into the dramaturgy of the play—giving us emotional context to generate new ideas about the play’s complex characters.

Michele’s warmth comes through her humor, which is a superpower she uses in rehearsal rooms as well as social situations to ensure that everyone is comfortable and cheerful. I think Michele de-stresses people enough to force their best work out of them. One of the most memorable pieces of advice that Michele drove home for me was that, as dramaturgs, we are sometimes serving the playwright best just by being there in the room as the play grows.

Patrick: Except for Paige [Espinosa], who interned in their rehearsal room, we didn’t really engage with Paul and Michele as artists. I’m grateful for this. Instead, I met Paul and Michele the people, and I think you’re right to call them legends. They are whip-smart, carefree, and viciously focused on their missions. They are the types of people who constantly, unthinkingly, put artists before themselves. It’s astounding.

Jilly: Paul and Michele are a powerhouse team. They kept me grounded in the core of what PlayPenn is really all about. But they also were encouraging me to explore my own sense of artistry. They nurture new work, but they also know that nurturing those involved in the making of it is of the utmost importance. When I had my interview with Paul, he was keen on learning what I wanted to get out of the entire experience.

This interview was originally published by Phindie on March 1, 2017.

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Playwrights Under Pressure: Part 2 of interview with OSLO playwright J.T. Rogers

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Interning PlayPenn, part 1: What theater students do behind the scenes of the playwriting conference

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