Works by Women interviewed Kathleen Amshoff about this happening — with performances by music maker Xenia Rubinos, downtown doyenne Eliza Bent, Southern gothic playwright Jason Williamson, Haitian-American comedy writer France-Luce Benson, choreographer Eija Ranta, vocalist Antwayn Hopper, composer Michael Kooman and experimental video artist Peter Burr –  and her plans for it.

WORKS BY WOMEN: What was the genesis of Hi-Lo?

KATHLEEN AMSHOFF: The work I make as a director often falls under ‘experimental’, but I went to grad school at Carnegie Mellon, which has a traditional focus on musical theater, TV and other commercial forms. I’ve always had my feet in both worlds and there’s astounding virtuosity in each of them. NYC theater often feels so insular, and then within the city we end up in these little aesthetic pods because of the needs of marketing, audience development and venues. The idea of HI-LO is to unghettoize both artists and audiences in an environment that feels playful, open and curious. I asked musical theater writer Chris Dimond to co-host and curate with me so that we could have a balance…and because we really enjoy mocking each other’s taste.

WBW:  What is a ‘performance party’ and how does it differ from other events? Or what is your desire for it?

KATHLEEN: It’s a party! People watch work and drink and socialize. HI-LO is a friendly atmosphere for both viewer and performer. When I first started working with Big Art Group, we developed material for a show through parties at Glasslands. I found the parties so fun and useful. And I’ve always loved the community-building at CATCH. Framing HI-LO as party allows us to watch genres and styles smack up against each other in an inclusive, celebratory format. It’s loose. And we’ve got a really incredible band rounding us out this time — Xenia Rubinos — whose album Magic Trix is coming out on Ba Da Bing this spring.

WBW: Hi-Lo is at JACK in Clinton Hill in Brooklyn. What excites you about holding Hi-Lo in Brooklyn at JACK?

KATHLEEN: JACK is a new venue and it’s beautiful! Most of us have worked in some pretty crusty spaces and JACK is well cared for by a committed crew headed by Alec Duffy. This crew is programming really eclectic, interesting stuff. If you go every night for a week you can see a new production, a reading of a French play, experimental jazz, horror drag, more. JACK is the NYC venue that excites me the most right now. And Clinton Hill — sigh — who doesn’t love this neighborhood?

WBW: What are your plans for future Hi-Lo events?

KATHLEEN: We have a list of directors, writers, composers, performance artists, choreographers and vocalists we want to invite, and we’re interested in submissions too. Ideally we’ll develop a curatorial committee so we can represent the diversity of performance in New York. For now, we hope people will come to the first HI-LO and propose pieces for the second and third. Maybe dissimilar artists will meet here and like each other, even collaborate! And we as viewers can remember that some of that stuff we rejected long ago really can be great.

Doors for Hi-Lo open March 18th at 8:00 pm. Showtime is 8:30 pm. Jack is located at  505 1/2 Waverly Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11238 Between Fulton and Atlantic in Clinton Hill (C or G train to Clinton-Washington).

Admission: Tickets to HI-LO are $10 and can be reserved by emailing hiloshow@gmail.com.

Miranda Jonte

WORKS BY WOMEN: Your play is set in Northern California. What is special and evocative about that location?

MIRANDA JONTE: I grew up in the Bay Area and have always been so nostalgic for it. The mountains, the redwoods, the coast. All are within a stone’s throw of each other, and each has its own magic. The redwoods with their fern companions, the fog which settles in the valleys in the mornings then slowly lifts as the day wears on, the easily identifiable Monterey Cypress tree. It is these things and more which I love so deeply my bones ache. The Bay air is so distinct, so lovely, that whenever I go home, I stick my hand out the window as I drive away from the San Francisco airport, and I know I’m home. An afternoon driving down the freeway with the Golden Gate Bridge to your right and the sun hitting the Bay, this is my first love. I wanted to bottle it, write a love letter to it.

WBW: Greasemonkey touches on loss and love. How did you approach these themes?

MIRANDA: I wanted to paint a picture of a woman who’d experienced great loss in her life, and present her with an opportunity to learn who she is, and the opportunity for her to get what she wants. But first she has to face the losses and how she’s used these losses as crutches to hide from herself, and what she truly, deeply wants. I went from there.

WBW: What do you hope audiences take away from Greasemonkey?

MIRANDA: That people, though flawed, are good. Just because a love may not be the right match for you, it doesn’t mean they’re the ‘bad guy.’ It was important to me to represent men fairly and positively. I also wanted to touch on the importance of taking responsibility for oneself in one’s life and that the situations people find themselves in are often of their own making. Which can suck to recognize.

WBW:  Greasemonkey was inspired by poetry. How did love poems lead to writing a play?

MIRANDA: I’d found a wonderful, silly, sexy, smart book called Bleeding Hearts: Love Poems for the Nervous and Highly Strung, during the course of a tough breakup. I wallowed for a long time with this book and its contents of (Pablo) Neruda, (Octavio) Paz, and more. I then got a bit more active and thought to string the poems together in a monologue of a woman charting the course of a relationship. From there, I made it a dialogue of poems between a man and a woman, and finally, after I grew up a bit and was ready to take a look at my part in why my relationships had unraveled, the play began to take shape in the form it’s currently in. This play began its life on the page as a letter of apology and acknowledgement to all the men I’ve been in relationships with. Et voila.

WBW: What is your favorite poem?

MIRANDA: Are you kidding? There are several! I absolutely love Simon Marshall’s ‘When I Mentioned Love:’ ‘She said, fetch me a plaster, So I ran headlong to the bathroom cabinet and sped back fearing she had done herself injury. She took it and stuck it right across my mouth.’

Sarah Corbett’s ‘Some Suggestions Concerning You’ is also quite beautiful. Paul Nelson’s ‘Breath Poem No. 1.’

WBW:  What are the challenges facing women in American theatre?

MIRANDA: Being taken as seriously as men in the realm of directing, playwriting and producing.

WBW: What gives you hope for women in American theatre?

MIRANDA: I went to a Super Bowl party the other night and met a woman playwright, nee actor, who has got a ton of stuff in the works. This gives one hope. A girlfriend of mine has her own production company and self-produces. She was a huge help and support for me. This gives one hope. I found myself in a position to hire female designers, which was fantastic. I think paying it forward and offering advice, help, opportunity for each other, this is key. And I can’t wait to do it again. Despite the gray hair it yields.

Greasemonkey runs February 13th – 24th at The Robert Moss Theater at 440 Studios in New York City. For more information and tickets, visit http://greasemonkey.weebly.com/.

For one reason or another. Insiders are happy to see these 15 extraordinary directors (in alphabetical order) — May Adrales, Jo Bonney, Carolyn Cantor, Rachel Chavkin, Jackson Gay, Anne Kauffman, Tina Landau, Pam MacKinnon, Patricia McGregor, Giovanna Sardelli, Anna D. Shapiro, Leigh Silverman, Rebecca Taichman, Daniella Topol, and Gaye Taylor Upchurch — front and center. And, of course, others mention that there are dozens more who could be profiled. Still it’s acknowledged as much work as they are getting, Broadway isn’t the most hospitable place for female directors (or playwrights for that matter).

And spend some time getting to know these terrific directors. Their individual profiles by Eric Grode — Meet the Directors – is worth a read.

In other news…

NBC News did a recent profile on the hardships actresses in Afghanistan face. To watch the profile, go here.

Michael Roderick, who is a terrific producer and blogger, wrote a fascinating article about frustration. It’s a good reminder to treat people who frustrate us the same way we treat ourselves for the same behavior.

Kiran Rikhye

Kiran spoke with Works by Women about the latest production of The Man Who Laughs, how the piece was originally created and how language is developed for a “silent film” piece.

WORKS BY WOMEN: How did you first create The Man Who Laughs, A Silent Film for Stage?

KIRAN RIKHYE: One of the things I love about working with Stolen Chair is that we have to reinvent new ways of creating material with each show we do, because each project is wildly different from the last.  The process that worked for developing a sex farce in Elizabethan blank verse probably won’t work for a vaudeville or a “silent film.” So we start each process pretty much clueless!  In the case of The Man Who Laughs, my Co-Artistic Director, Jon Stancato, and I had both fallen in love with the premise (which we stole from a Victor Hugo novel of the same name), and Jon had come up with the idea of staging it like a silent film.  But we really had no model for how you go about creating such a piece. We figured it out the way we figure out the process for nearly all of our shows — by going on a three day long creative retreat with an ensemble of actors, musicians, and designers. These retreats are where we work through whatever has us stumped. In this case, we were stumped by how to develop plot and text when we didn’t really know which should come first: the written words or the stage action.  So we figured it out, slowly, painfully–going back and forth between the director choreographing, the actors moving in the space, and me writing, piecing the play together bit by bit. Honestly, it was a horribly frustrating experience, and we felt we must be doing it all wrong. Then we happened to watch a documentary about Charlie Chaplin in which we learned that he experienced many of the very same frustrations that we were experiencing, which made us feel much, much better!

WBW:  What is it like to develop a piece where the relationship to language has been changed?

KIRAN: That’s such a great question! Developing this piece is, honestly, so much fun and so tremendously confusing. It turns play writing totally on its head. Since stage action alternates with title cards being projected onto a black screen, the audience cannot simultaneously see a character speak and know what that character is saying. Words are separated from images, and the text literally interrupts the action. The sense of build and rhythm is totally different from what it would be in a “normal” play. Of course, the text also needs to do all those good old-fashioned things like communicating character, moving the story forward, etc. It’s such a wonderful challenge to have to look at words in such a different light. Lastly, rewriting this piece for a its 2013 incarnation has been fascinating. Because so much of the story is communicated wordlessly, so much depends upon the individual actors’ choices and bodies. And because the projected title cards are designed to complement the stage action (and vice versa), the script grows and changes along with the ensemble. A lot has remained the same as in the 2005 version, but a lot has also been changed. It’s really delightful to work on a that this piece is such a living, breathing organism.

WBW:  Why revisit The Man Who Laughs now?

KIRAN: We’ve been wanting to revisit The Man Who Laughs for quite a while now. When we first created it, the company was only three years old, and it was the most ambitious work we’d undertaken. It’s always held a special place in our hearts, and now, in our tenth anniversary season, we wanted to reach back into the archives and pull out an old favorite. It’s been wonderful to revisit the material now that we’re older and (I’d like to think) a bit wiser. By a happy coincidence, I think this is also a good moment for this kind of work — as unusual as a “live silent film for the stage” still is, we’ve recently seen silent film make a comeback with The Artist. Victor Hugo has made a bit of a comeback, too, with Les Miserables. A live silent film for the stage still may not be something you see everyday, but it’s just a tad less mysterious sounding than it was eight years ago. Audiences can come in with a little bit more context for what the show is about, and have a richer experience. (Of course, there’s a time and place for theatre that is so unlike anything audiences have ever seen that it practically rewires their brain circuitry to, but oftentimes I think a little bit of the familiar combined with a little bit of the new can be a nice thing!)

WBW:  What may audiences expect from the production?

KIRAN: Audiences can expect a live play that looks, feels, and sounds like a black-and-white silent film of the 1920s. This show, which is performed in black-and-white costumes and makeup on a black-and-white set, with live piano accompaniment, takes audiences back to a time when performers didn’t need to speak in order to pull on our heart strings and tickle our funny bones. Freely inspired by Victor Hugo’s novel of the same name, it tells the hilarious and heartrending story of Gwynplaine, a clown whose face has been surgically disfigured into a permanent smile. Performing with his adoptive sister and father, Gwynplaine gains fame and a very modest fortune for his comic acts and his comical face. Secretly he yearns to be more than a freak and a jok, but when his yearning leads him into the arms of a debauched duchess fascinated by his grin, the results are disastrous for Gwynplaine and for his family. Audiences can definitely expect to laugh, tear up a little, and enjoy free, freshly popped popcorn.

WBW: What are two silent films that everyone must watch and why?

KIRAN: There are so many absolutely amazing films. It’s really impossible to narrow it down to just two!  But okay, I’d say Chaplin’s City Lights, for starters.  It’s a great example of the simple, moving storytelling that can be achieved without spoken words. With only images and sparse text, it relies on a certain old-fashioned melodrama, alongside Chaplin’s whimsy, that would probably be ruined if the actors were able to speak out loud. The second film I’m going to recommend is a strange choice, in part because the film was actually never finished, but Queen Kelly, directed by Erich von Stroheim and starring Gloria Swanson, epitomizes a lot of what’s great about silent film. In 1950′s Sunset Boulevard, Gloria Swanson, playing the faded silent star Norma Desmond, utters the famous line, “We didn’t need dialogue.  We had faces!” In Queen Kelly, you see exactly what Norma Desmond means. Gloria Swanson has a face, and she knows how to use it. Even though you’re likely to be watching it on a relatively small TV screen, Queen Kelly gives a good sense, I think, of the expressive grandeur that many silent film stars had. The movie also has a deliciously and (to our eyes) absurdly twisted sensibility that silent films do so well (an extended sequence of a jealous mad queen attacking a helpless lovesick maiden with a riding crop?  What’s not to love?)

Really, there are so many great films and so many tremendous performers, I could go on and on.  For a quick sense of what makes silent film fundamentally different from “talkies,” though, I’d start with those two.

WBW: What are the challenges facing women in American theatre?

KIRAN: I can certainly answer that question from the perspective of a playwright, though I think female actors, designers, etc. all have their own distinct sets of challenges.  If I had to pinpoint the single biggest challenge for female playwrights in America, I’d actually say it’s that sometimes, in the efforts of granting organization, presenting organizations, and the theatre community at large to make sure the female playwrights are well represented, we focus on finding works that are engaging overtly with issues of female identity, or that somehow strike us as markedly different from “male writing” (whatever that is).  We start looking for female voices that wear their femaleness on their sleeve, so we can say “Ah! This was written by a woman!” I think work that engages with questions of identity or overtly engages with feminist issues is extremely important, but I also think there are plenty of excellent female writers whose work doesn’t fit that mold.  It’s just as important to champion strong work by writers who just happen to be female as it is to champion plays an overt and central role in their work.  I do also want to say, though, that there are so many profound challenges facing everyone working in American theatre today (particularly non-commercial theatre, but also theatre more generally), that I think the biggest challenges facing women are the same as the biggest challenges face men. The funding models for theatre in America don’t seem to me to work very reliably, and the number of artists (including those who could be considered very successful in their fields) who work multiple jobs and/or struggle to pay the rent is almost unbelievable.  These broader challenges have a huge impact on everyone, women included, of course.

WBW: What gives you hope for women in American theatre?

KIRAN: Right now, in New York, there are so many exceptional women leading companies, having their work produced, running theatres.  Women are all over the theatre scene, often leading the charge, and that’s pretty fantastic.  There are also so many wonderful examples of women working in close collaboration with men (including Stolen Chair, among many others!) to my mind, that’s very, very exciting!

The Man Who Laughs performs January 31st through February 24th at Urban Stages in New York City. For tickets, visit www.SmartTix.com.

The Man Who Laughs photo credit: Carrie Leonard

While I did not know Ms. Jacker, my Facebook wall is filled with fitting tributes, remembrances and fond memories of an artistic life. RIP Ms. Jacker.
And, there is an online petition to support playwright Maria Irene Fornes by moving her closer to New York City and her devoted stable of friends and fellow artists. Over 2,000 people have signed the petition in the past week. That’s no surprise given that Ms. Fornes is cited by many in the theater community as one of their biggest influences, mentors and beacons. Her career has been extraordinary and touched people around the world. She has dealt with the effects of Alzheimer’s for years, and is currently in a nursing home in upstate New York State, far from the people who would routinely visit her. Please take a moment to read the petition and sign it, if you are so moved.

Desiree spoke to Works by Women about her first visions of creating a work inspired by the ‘tar baby’ folktale, the New York Neo-Futurists (of which she is a member), and the intersectionality of capitalism and race.

WORKS BY WOMEN: Tar Baby traces, unearths and brings to life America’s 200+ year (as you describe it) “black & white affair, from shotgun wedding to ‘post racial’ open relationship.” What was your first impulse/inspiration to create this show?

DESIREE BURCH: As with most artistic endeavors, it was an accident. (Co-writer) Dan Kitrosser and I thought we were going to e a clean little piece of educational theater by weaving folktale and personal narrative. Somewhere along the line we went horribly wrong and wound up with this wonderful little ‘tar baby’.

WBW: And how did you narrow it down and keep it under two hours? What was the process of selecting which highlights/stories/angles to present to dramatize?

DESIREE: This show has had a nice, long evolution and I trust it’s only just beginning. But I basically started by throwing out a lot of personal stories that I thought had some adherence to folk tale, legend, and, in particular, the tar baby story. Dan was interested in story and memory and how it alters experience, and we cycled through a lot of my personal and familial history–which hadn’t really been covered in any of my other solo work. In the last iteration, the show had a lot to do with that lineage and legacy from slavery to present. In this evolution, the editing process came more from an examination of story itself. We had worked toward this little epiphany about what we were really talking about–the story of race and the ways in which it’s sold–only to realize that it was, fittingly, where we had started. Ha!

WBW:  In creating and performing this show, what have you discovered or further explored about the nexus of capitalism and race?

DESIREE: To me, this show has been about personal and cultural healing, and it’s been a relief to be pulling back the curtains on this particular subject.  The discovery that the man behind them is just Mr. Moneybags has been an interesting process of understanding. I thought it was something else. I was under the spell of believing that there was actual value to the prejudices we ascribe to people, even though I might repudiate them… especially because I might repudiate them.  Giving them such value and power in my life.  To simply see it all as a result and reflection of human greed is oddly comforting–taking it out of the realm of things I need to identify with exclusively, and seeing it as a little more inclusive and perennial. I mean, we are always talking about money.

WBW: You are fearless (I’m thinking about The Soup Show) and funny (Everything you’ve done). Who inspired you to be both of these?

DESIREE: We got America to thank for that. And maybe being a middle child in my family. There are multiple sources to thank for my always having felt invisible in the world, feeling like I needed to scream to be heard, and spending the first half of my life too self-conscious to scream. Now the vigor and relentlessness of this kind of communication is part of what I do. I hope that desire lasts for a little while.  It’s kind of my thing.  As far as the humor, I have being an overweight brainy black kid who needed to survive and the constant companion of television to thank for that.

WBW: You are also a member of the New York Neo-Futurists. What have you cherished most about your experience with the New York Neos?

DESIREE: God, I love those kids.  I love the family that it has been to me in developing parts of my life.  It was that little artist Petri dish in which I grew and learned my own artistic ethics and values and tricks of the trade.  I learned a lot about theater and performance making there and finding my place among some of the most fiercely dedicated and passionate artists this city has to offer.  I learned a lot more fight as an artist in the struggle we went through in establishing ourselves here, as well as the internal struggles that came with producing theater with all of these fiercely individual artistic minds finding their own voices.  It was a little bit of performance art grad school for me, with far more companionship than that experience, and far less talk of dissertations and other boring things.

WBW: What are the challenges facing women in American theatre?

DESIREE: I am guessing they are among the same challenges facing women everywhere else in America.  More voices and more versions of women being represented and expected in theater.  Being vigilant about this kind of thing without being exclusive.

WBW: What gives you hope for women in American theatre?

DESIREE: All those women writers.

Tar Baby continues through January 19th. For tickets and info, visit http://desireeburch.com/solo-shows/tar-baby/.

KARA-LYNN: It’s always great to work with Kara Lee. She’s a wonderful collaborator. She is really responsive to what actors and a director bring to her text in rehearsals and there is just an ease and a confidence to her writing and to her presence in the room that makes you feel like you’re in good hands, artistically.
 
What I love about her work is that she’s a little dirty, which you don’t expect, and her characters are a little dirty. Her characters are rough around the edges but they’re also very witty and smart. All of Kara’s plays have one really weird thing, like dolls that talk or you know Carol Channing shows up or something. There is always that element of the magical being, but then it always gets called on!
 
It’s never like “oh that was actually magical” it’s more like “you realize that I’m a doll that talks, right?” So I really jive with that. This idea that there can be magic in the world, but you can’t really trust it or it can’t be totally pure, you always have to find the man behind the curtain. And I feel that way too. I enjoy magical things but I’m always like but “what’s REALLY going on here?”
 
WBW: You work at NYU and University of Massachusetts-Amherst. What is working with students like? What do you learn from them too?
 
KARA-LYNN: Working with students is extremely rewarding! I think directing plays and teaching students is equally rewarding to me, but in different ways and I think that’s why I do both of them. My students give me so much more than I can really express.
 
The thing that I continually learn from my students is that theatre is FUN! Because you get to a certain point where you’re just tired and you feel cynical but for undergrads it’s all amazing and new. If you start thinking you know how theatre works then its time to quit! Their questions remind me that I actually don’t know any answers either, and that journey is one of the things I love about the job of directing AND teaching. Keep curiosity alive!

WBW: What’s next for you?

KARA-LYNN: This summer I did an area premiere of a new musical at American Stage in June and then in July I did a two week workshop at the Huntington and then in August I did an area premiere of Jenufa, which is a Slavic opera in Czech, so I had to sort of learn Czech and now I’m doing AliceGraceAnon with New Georges, and soon as it opens I go into rehearsals for Benjamin Britten’s Midsummer Nights Dream opera and then I am doing the world premiere of a new Spanish golden age play written by a previously undiscovered female Spanish playwright. That rehearses in January/February and then goes up in March. After all that I’m going to take a nap! I’m having a really good run.
 
WBW:  What are the challenges women in American theatre face?
 
KARA-LYNN: That question is hard because what I want to say is that they’re the same challenges that American women face in the workforce in general. The glass ceiling is a little higher, but it is still in place. I know that’s not a popular thing to say but I experience it and I see it. I think theatre is hard for anybody to do, and then its doubly hard for women to do just because there aren’t as many of us in positions of power.
 
So I think the key is getting more women into positions of artistic and financial leadership, so we can hire each other like boys do! But that said, even in the last ten years I feel a lot more hopeful than ever before. When I first started out it was weird to be a woman director. It was a total boys club. It may still be boys club but I feel like you’re not allowed to be as brazen about it, the whole attitude has gone underground a little bit. And I just know so many more female directors and playwrights and producers, so that’s exciting.
 
WBW:  What gives you hope for women in American theatre?
 
KARA-LYNN: I feel like one thing I have experienced that is hopeful is that I no longer get referred to as a “woman director” and more and more often people are not talking about “women playwrights”. The conversation when I was starting in my career was about women directors and playwrights as an anomaly, but now I get to be just “a director”. But mainly, what gives me hope for women in theatre is all the women who are MAKING THEATRE!

For more information on the production of AliceGraceAnon as well as tickets, visit New Georges’ web site.

Akia

Akia spoke to Works by Women about why she has wanted to direct Bug for five years, how Hotel Suite came to be and how the New York Innovative Theatre Awards has built community.

WORKS BY WOMEN:  How did the idea of Hotel Suite develop?

AKIA: It happened in stages, I’d been wanting to Rising Sun to do Bug for five years, and somehow the timing never quite worked out. I kept going back to the play, and it struck me how the play needed to be in a small theatre, there are such quiet intense moments that the audience really needs to inhabit the space with Peter and Agnes, I started picturing the hotel room/stage in my head and realized that I wanted to explore a non traditional play for this story. I wanted the audience to experience the story in a different way.  From a logistical and ensemble point of view, we wanted to produce a show that the whole ensemble could be a part of which would be difficult to do with a five-person cast.  It then grew into a theme of “hotels.” the thought of exploring story telling inspired by a particular type of space, everyone has a hotel story, some memory of travel or a connection with someone.   So the idea got bigger and bigger and we expanded to include our annual one act series and a second mainstage, Fool for Love which had also been on the table for awhile.

WBW: In addition to producing the whole event, you are directing Tracy Letts’ Bug. What have you wanted to do the play for five years?

AKIA: I love this play so so much. There are so many angles and nuances. I told my actors from day one this is a story about two people connecting in a way that they can’t with any other person.  I also think of it as a love story, two people pushed to their very limits of reality but never faltering in their faith and hope for the other person.  I imagine some people would think I’m quite twisted for calling it a love story, but in the end, its Agnes and Peter against external and internal forces. They travel this amazing twisted gruesome journey together.  Yes there is definitely more to the story, and there are some horrible things that they do and inflict on others, but in the end its about this thing that they share with only each other. It’s them against the world and the bugs.  Tracy Letts creates a really vivid environment to play with, and the space in which they inhabit is so clear.  It’s been such an amazing gift to work on this play.

WBW:  What should audiences expect regarding their Hotel Suite experience?

AKIA: Immersion. The audience “checks in” from the moment they walk into the lobby to the end of the play, they should be open to being swept away from reality for a little bit.  Each of the plays in Hotel Suite offer a little something different, but they share a commonality in the sense that they are all just a bit off kilter and explore stretching reality and taking one out of the every day.  Fool for Love has a fantasy element to it, Room 128 has great funny farce and camp, and Bug clearly pushes the boundaries of ones comfort zone.

WBW: Tell me more about Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love and the evening of short plays with hotel themes, Room 128.  

AKIA: Tim Butterfield leads an awesome cast in Fool for Love, and it’s such an interesting contrast to the other two pieces.  It’s a heartbreaking love story, of two people that can never be, but its want they want most in the world.  It has a dusty Americana charm to it.

Room 128 is silly campy fun, Ghosts, Bellhops, Revenge, Sex and Donuts. It runs the gamut and has the largest cast. It really offers some great light hearted fun as well as some dark intense moments.

WBW: You work so diligently on behalf of the New York Innovative Theatre Awards. What makes them special?

 
AKIA: I feel absolutely honored and privileged to be a part of such an amazing organization. Eight years ago the Indie Theatre community really felt fractured, we were all working in silos, and for the most part not connecting on the level in which we are now. I really credit the IT Awards with bridging the gap and bringing the community together. We ARE a community now as a result of this organization.   I think it’s also raised the bar and expectation of what we as producers and the audience and press expects of Indie Theatre in NYC. Eight or ten years ago, people didn’t expect much of Off-Off Broadway, but now it’s a respected maker of theatre. People have a better understanding of THIS is where art is being made, this is where the next generation of theatre greats are coming from, people are getting published on a much more regular basis without their shows going to Broadway first.  I work so hard, because I believe in this community, I believe in this organization and I believe in the three people (Shay Gines, Nick Micozzi and Jason Bowcutt) who brought us all together.

WBW:  What are the challenges facing women in American theatre?

AKIA: I think there still seems to be a Boys club mentality in the fields of tech and directing in Broadway and Off Broadway. You don’t see a lot of women directors out there, you have a handful of women who seem to get the work, but it seems harder for women to break into commercial theatre on the other side of the curtain.

It’s definitely changing for the better and that’s exciting.  I’m not sure what the real barrier is, perhaps perception?

WBW: What gives you hope for women in American theatre?

AKIA: It’s a changing landscape, I’m seeing more and more women branching out their skills and trying new things. I see more female directors and playwrights names out there. I think the indie theatre community is helping to break down walls for women in theatre and change perceptions and expectations.  What gives me hope? Literally the eight amazing female interns that worked for me this past summer with Rising Sun and the IT Awards.

I’m seeing some brilliantly talented ladies coming out of university programs in all sorts of fields: Dramaturgy, Stage Management, Direction, Company Management, Playwriting, Design.  These girls are powerhouses at 20-years-old and haven’t even lived up to their full potential. The fact that these young women are finding Indie theatre, and putting themselves out there, and exploring and working is inspiring.

Tickets to Hotel Suite range from $18 to $30. Visit Rising Sun Performance Company‘s web site for more information and tickets.

Cram spoke with Works by Women about her favorite inspiring place in New York, how Cino Nights helped to ignite the creation of Radiance and how she helps other female playwrights.

WORKS BY WOMEN:  A version of Radiance appeared for one night in June as part of Rising Phoenix Rep’s Cino Nights? How was Cino Nights helpful in the development of the piece?

CUSI CRAM: The play would not exist, in any shape or form if it were not for Cino Nights and the good folks of Rising Phoenix Rep. There is nothing better than knowing that something you have written will most certainly be performed. It is such a profoundly hopeful thing for a playwright and hope is important in a profession that abounds with all shapes and sizes of despair. Also the space, the back room of a bar, in some ways dictated the play to me. The constraint of that forced me to think inside the box, rather than outside of it. I was extremely unoriginal I set this play in a bar. I have never wanted to write a bar play. And I did.

The experience also afforded me the opportunity to work with two of the actors who will be in the production. They taught me a great deal about the characters. As did our director, Suzanne Agins, who is also directing the production with LAByrinth. An experience where everyone is working from their first impulses and have completely thrown the idea of any sort of perfection out the window is very liberating. It’s such a jumpstart to a play. I entered the process not knowing if what I had written was a play and left certain it was. That is a huge amount to accomplish with twenty hours of rehearsal.

WBW:  What can audiences expect from the LAByrinth production of the play?

CUSI: The acting as per usual with LAByrinth will be top notch. My cast is dreamy:  Ana Reeder, Kohl Sudduth, Kelly Aucoin and Araon Weiner. Also, we are really transforming the space at the Bank Street Theater, it will feel very different from how it usually does. I’m very excited about all the designers we are working with. I think they have such a deep understanding of the play and the feeling I want the visual elements of the piece to convey. And the story is surprising, sad and a little funny even though it’s about quite serious subject matter.

WBW:   Are you still planning to write other plays that deal with the bomb? Has this production helped you develop your ideas further about the other plays?

CUSI: I am still really interested other stories about the atomic and post atomic age and how the bomb has affected the course of American history.  I think it’s the defining moment of this century and the deeper you dig the more wild stories come to the surface. I don’t have a specific story I am aching to tell right now but a more general sense that I want to explore more stories based on historical fact. I think Radiance could be part of a trilogy about America. I suppose I am at a point in my life where I am trying to grapple what is means to be an American in the time we live in. I think you need to go back at least as far as 1945 to figure that out.

WBW: You grew up in Manhattan. What is one of the city’s hidden gems? A great place for inspiration?

CUSI: I have always been partial to the Frick Museum. It’s such a reasonable size and has a wonderfully curated collection of paintings. The courtyard at the Frick is where I go when I feel like the world makes no sense, or if I’m sick to death of the city. It restores my faith in most things.

WBW:  You just participated in WRITE OUT FRONT. What was that experience like?

CUSI: It was incredibly fun and weird. It’s odd to have people watching you when you write. It is normally such a private thing. That said, I think anything that makes people think about playwrights and what we do is a good thing. One forgets that writing is also a physical act. I felt very conscious of that. The pages I wrote were not very good.

WBW:  What are the challenges facing women in American theatre?

CUSI: I think the main challenge is that we are under produced. Most theatre professionals are aware of that fact after the various large-scale conversations that have been going on around the subject over the last few years.  There has been a bit of a shift but not a seismic one. One way we can help change the status quo is by women supporting other women theatre artists. I try to do this. I recommend female writers to theatres and agents. I write about writers I think people should know about. I have helped develop a prize for emerging women writer’s (www.leahryansfeww.com). I believe that building an extended community of women who do this impossibly hard thing is one way to not get discouraged and stop writing.  My motto is: if we write it, they will come. I know it’s idealistic but I have faith in small groups of people to change the status quo by being steadfast and dogged.

WBW:  What gives you hope for women in American theatre?

CUSI: I think that theater still exists is hopeful for women, and everyone else who feels compelled to be involved in theatre. It’s this strange ancient form that in many ways is not particularly relevant in our culture. Particularly as the way we watch things has become less communal. It seems like the norm now is to have a very individualized experience of entertainment that you can watch on a variety of different sized screens. And yet…people still write plays, and other people still produce them. That very fact gives me hope. I feel like we are on the Titanic, but the orchestra is still playing. I suppose that is not a particularly hopeful image but there is something beautiful about holding on to this rich form in spite of the world of entertainment changing around us as we speak. I think the primal need that people still have to tell stories for the stage and that people still show up to be moved, angered, and enlightened is wildly hopeful.

Radiance begins performances at the Bank Street Theater on November 1st. Suzanne Agins directs.

As summer came to a close, The New York Times reported that Julie Taymor and the producers of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark reached an agreement on the lawsuits they filed against one another about compensation and creative credit. The settlement’s terms were undisclosed. The very expensive production has created one of the biggest offstage dramas in the past few years.

After recently completing my first online class on Coursera (World Music — it was fantastic by the way), an iTunes E-mail touting a free online course on Playwriting caught my eye. Produced by the National Theatre, the course offers 15 lectures (primarily by men – David Hare, Nicholas Hytner etc with Katori Hall) on a variety of topics. What really inspired me was how prominently the course was featured in Apple’s E-mail. It received second billing. Not too bad.

Materials for the Arts, a free resource for nonprofit organizations in New York City, is a blessing to thousands of artists, arts organizations and other nonprofits as it offers donated materials that people or corporations would otherwise throw away for free. You can find terrific fabric, random art objects, furniture, paint and a myriad of objects there. I’ve seen many productions in New York that spent very little money on their scenic budget because the scenic designer scored most of the material from MFTA.  On Tuesday, October 23rd, the organization will host the Masked Marvelous Cocktail Party to support its efforts. Tickets are a reasonably priced (compared to many NYC benefits) $60, and help this very valuable organization continue to supports arts in New York. For more information, visit MFTA’s web site.

This article found its way into my inbox multiple times in the last few days. And rightly so. It’s a must read article for anyone interested in women’s issues, theater or the challenges that women face. The Guardian details how young female actresses are under attack — even threat of assassination — in Afghanistan for being actresses and working with men who are not their husbands.

On the flip side, here’s an encouraging article in Bust Magazine about stage and screen star Martha Plimpton‘s new nonprofit: A is For. Check out this amazing work.