Listen in as ExtraO1dinary Aliens! playwright Carolina Ðỗ and assistant director/stage manager Isabel Criado discuss nightmares becoming reality, bureaucratic flattening, telling stories to heal, collaboration & community & education, and growing, changing, & becoming more real.
“It’s about people trying to survive the American government…”
“…while pursuing the American dream. Which is such a paradox. But a reality.”
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Listen in as Our House playwright Barry Boehm and actor Christopher Borg discuss wedding jitters, putting your play in history, living a life of dignity & honesty & joy anywhere, legacy, sticking your foot in it but trying to do better, rom-com energy, & the history and importance of the producing company, TOSOS.
“…I’ve had the basic ideas of this play for many years…originally it was going to be about the life of gay people, comparing the East Coast to the Midwest…then as I got older, it became a more intergenerational discussion…things just sort of changed…it’s about people that are trying to find their voice, and express who they are, but are often caught up…they experience crises in different ways…”
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Listen in as Christian Parker, producer & director of The First Line of Dante’s Inferno, discusses blank slates, finding a rhythm, getting the audience ahead of what they’re experiencing, letting the humor live, and the weird magic that happens when people get lost in the woods.
“…I think more broadly, the play is about longing, and feeling lost in midlife, and loneliness, and what sort of questions we find ourselves having to answer in the middle of our lives when we’ve already made a bunch of choices, and have to make some decisions about whether we’re going to honor those, or take a totally new direction…”
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Listen in as Mano a Mano creator/composer/performer Paul Pinto, along with director Kristin Marting, discuss getting over live performance doomerism, celebrating/questioning/undressing/redressing/exposing masculinity, giving the audience access to the performer, theatrical collaboration, the work of the body in creating vocal sound, a work of art’s relevance in time and space, and giving the audience a good time.
“…I like to see theatre that impresses me…that makes me feel like, when I sit down there, not only can I not believe what’s going on onstage, but I want to jump onstage and take part…”
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Listen in as Ed Schmidt, creator and performer of Edward, discusses melodramatic origins to fictionalized short stories, a “theatrical epistolary novel,” doing what you can do and not what other playwrights do, cutting out the middle men, object—>story vs. story—>object, and finding the sustainable model that works for you.
“…somebody else’s life started to emerge from this, and at a certain point I realized, ‘this is a play, told this way.’ […] And I thought, ‘how could I do this thing, which is really kinda anti-dramatic…and make that theatrical in some way’…”
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Listen in as performer/producer/mom/singer/diva/creator of In My Condition, Camber Carpenter, discusses parenthood, the stand-up/cabaret intersection, the scariness of being brutally honest, Mother Nature’s trickery, adding in that ever-changing additional performer (the audience), letting loose, and taking the initiative to make art while being a mom.
“…our world is difficult in so many ways right now…bringing a little joy to somebody for a while is pretty important, I think…”
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Listen in as What If They Ate the Baby? playwrights, directors, & performers Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland—Xhloe & Natasha—discuss being fascinated by history, deep absurdity, dressing up in femininity (as opposed to the masculinity of their last NYC show), zooming into a slice of life, true crime re-enactments, green spaghetti, candy-coated plasticky artifice, and not letting anything go to waste.
“…my biggest tip when you come see this show is, let it happen to you—don’t hurt yourself trying to get to the bottom, ‘what does this mean?’…just wait for the car ride home…”
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Listen in as Dimension Zero co-creators, performers, and Boxcutter Collective members Joe Therrien, Ali Dineen, Darkin Brown, Tom Cunningham, Sam Wilson, & Jason Hicks discuss consensus not compromise, salad bars, writing and shaping earworms, grant-writing as production impetus, outside eyes, reality catching up to dark comedy, “following the giggle,” and how a collective comes together to create an anti-capitalist musical puppet show.
“…one of the reasons we made this show, is to not go insane…art allows you to take that thing you can’t deal with, and it allows you to put it into your hands to mess with. For us, with this show, it’s taking this planetary moment of terror…it allows us to at least put it in front of us, and put it in front of the audience, in a way we can feel empowered, and hopeful…”
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Listen in as Helen in Her Homeland playwright Alexandra Haddad discusses immersion & implication, fragments of poetry, working outward from dialogue, leaving arts admin jobs, listening without responding, writing as a director, what propels us through the difficulty of production, and “the spectrum between Sarah Ruhl and Sarah Kane.”
“…early on, Helen says, ‘you might think you’re above that,’ like, judging people by their appearance, but ‘you have a body, too, you have a face, too,’ and you know that those things have consequences in the world. And so, I do want the audience to feel both invited, and implicated in that conversation…”
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Listen in as The Goo director Eliza Palter, along with performers Vena Howard & Kat Quiñones, discuss unintended distance from your friends, efficient vibes, the built-up pressure of your 20s, creating compelling stage pictures on a picnic blanket, activating ideas & notions, sitcom framing, being real & having the hard conversations, and what a modern examination of the themes of The Importance of Being Earnest could look like.
“…it’s an ensemble piece, it’s funny, it’s about a bunch of people sitting around and talking about nothing, getting nowhere…and while this play isn’t a one-to-one adaptation…you have this sense that there’s something burbling under the surface that we’re not quite getting at. It’s a meditation on authenticity, on performance…”
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