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“Nobody cares what a playwright looks like”: F.J. Hartland interview, part 1

8/4/2015

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F.J. Hartland has been called “Pittsburgh’s most eminent playwright” and his plays have won numerous awards. 

Hartland’s MOTHER TONGUE, about a different kind of love triangle, will be one of the highlight productions of this year’s GayFest! 

Hartland spoke about his background, success, and influences ahead of GayFest! 2015. 
Eger: What sparked your interest in theater in general and writing plays in particular?
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F. J. Hartland as actor, Conor McPherson’s Shining City
Hartland: When I was 13 or so, I asked for a typewriter for Christmas. My parents obliged, and I just began writing plays. And I’m not exactly sure why, as I come from a family that has no interest in theater at all. If I wasn’t involved, they probably [would] never see a play!
Eger: Three guesses: You had good teachers who encouraged you all the way.

Hartland:
Yes,I had many wonderful teachers who encouraged my writing. For the 1974 summer program of The Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Arts, I was accepted into the creative writing class.

I went to college to study acting, but the head of our theater program told me I was “too short, too fat, too ugly and too untalented” to be an actor. So I went back to writing. Nobody cares what a playwright looks like. So I switched to the English Department where my new advisor encouraged me to go to graduate school to study playwriting
.
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Poster for upcoming Games of the Mind by F. J. Hartland
Eger: You have been writing plays for over 40 years. Were there any themes or patterns that emerged?

Hartland:
There is a joke in Pittsburgh theater circles that all I write about is death. And I guess that’s true. What’s more dramatic than life and death? I have a new play opening in Pittsburgh in September called Games of the Mind. I told the producing Throughline Theatre Company that they should use the advertising tag line, “It’s a Hartland play and nobody DIES!”
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F.J. Hartland as Charlie and Amy Landis as Liz in The Whale by Samuel D. Hunter
Eger: You spent your professional life as a playwright, actor, and director. Given that rich background, what were some of the highlights?  

Hartland:
This past spring I played the lead in the play The Whale at Off The Wall in Carnegie, so that was one of the true high points in my acting career. I’ve been a member of Actors Equity for almost twenty-five years, and The Whale was a real pinnacle for me.

One of the best times I ever had as a director was over a year ago when I directed The Mystery of Irma Vep for a local theater. I had an amazing cast, wonderful designers, and a crackerjack crew of dressers who kept those two actors racing through hundreds of quick changes. I was able to sit back and enjoy just directing, or as Orson Welles used to say, “presiding over the happy accidents.”  And we had many happy accidents.

As a playwright, I feel like I have reached a true achievement when a total stranger tells me how much my words have moved him or her. If something I put on a piece of paper can make someone I don’t know laugh or cry . . . wow.
Eger: In 2008, you were the recipient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Playwriting Fellowship. How did that honor impact your life as a writer?
Hartland: It was a true godsend because I was broke at the time and the $5,000 saved my life.  Sadly, that was the last year the state of Pennsylvania awarded individual artist grants. Budgets were cut—starting with the arts.
Eger: Tell us about your writing process. What works for you and what does not?

Hartland:
I can’t even start writing until I know the first and the last thing I want the audience to see. Then my first draft is trying to see if I can get from that first picture to the last picture. I often say that a play has to “simmer on the back burner” in my brain for a long time before I am comfortable enough to commit to the idea.
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I have playwright friends who just sit down and let the story take them wherever the story takes them. I am too much of a “control freak” to do that. If I get in a car or a bus or a plane, I need to know where I am going. If I commit to writing a play, I need to know where I am going.
Eger: You have written mostly one-acts, but also some full-length plays. Which ones get performed more often?
Hartland: Definitely the one-acts. There seems to be a much bigger market for them. I think there is something really wonderful about a well-crafted one-act. If they’re good, they are little jewels. Probably for the same reason I love short stories.
Eger: You said that your ideas come from many different places. Tell us more about the things that influenced your plays.
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Hartland: I once wrote a play based on a name I saw carved on a tombstone. Once I wrote a play based on a photograph I saw in the newspaper. Another play was inspired by something funny my sister said. I keep all my inspirations in what I call my “idea book.”  It is an unorganized mish-mash of possible play titles, character names, ideas for plays, and funny lines.
Eger: Very few writers can live on their plays. What did you do to support your writing financially?

Hartland:
I lived in Pittsburgh for seven years and did a myriad of things to keep body and soul together. I was a college adjunct, teaching mostly freshman composition and public speaking. I wrote and edited copy for a small newspaper. I worked as a proofreader. I graded essays for a company that processed the standardized school testing. Sometimes I held down as many as five part-time jobs.
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Pittsburgh skyline with Sea of Fog. Photo by Ruth E. Hendricks
A year ago, I accepted a position teaching theater full-time at a small liberal arts college here in western Pennsylvania.
Eger: Congratulations!


HENRIK EGER

For interview originally published by Phindie, click here. 
 
[Plays & Players Skinner Studio, 1714 Delancey Place] August 13-21, 2015; quinceproductions.com.
GayFest! 2015 runs August 7-22, 2015, at Plays & Players Skiner Studio [1714 Delancey Place]. MOTHER TONGUE has performance August 13, 14, 16, 17, 19, and 21 (all at 7 pm). 


Check quinceproductions.com for the full schedule and tickets.

For a video interview with F.J. Hartland, “Pittsburgh’s most prominent playwright,” click here. 

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