Writers Group Spotlight: Vincent Delaney

Vincent-Delaney headshot, photog LaRae-Lobdell

Vincent Delany. Photo by LaRae-Lodbell.

Last weekend we presented readings of plays by four Writers Group playwrights. This weekend we’ll finish off the Writers Group Showcase with readings by the other four. Among the playwrights read this weekend will be Scot Augustson (who you met last week), and Vincent Delaney, who is interviewed by Augustson below. This is the seventh interview in a series of eight.

SA: Tell us what show you’re putting up in the showcase and just a little about how it came to be.

VD: The Ansel Intimacy is set in a dystopian near future where those who are lucky have Sharers, who are grown to provide them with replacement organs. The world of the play is a bit like Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, but in this case the focus is on a sixty-year relationship between an “owner” and his Sharer. That relationship gets more and more complex over time.

I wrote the play for two fantastic actors, Ray Tagavilla and Aaron Blakely. The impetus came about more or less randomly—I admire them both, turns out they knew each other, and somehow it came out that they hadn’t worked together since college. Right then I got a vibe that I could make something awesome for these guys.

SA: So, you wrote it specifically for those two actors. Was it easier, harder or just different writing with someone in mind?  Did you hear them when you wrote the dialogue?

VD: This play went really fast—December 2012, with a good draft by early January. That had a huge amount to do with writing for these specific actors.  I heard their voices from start to finish, and once I understood the structure of the play—each section moves forward fifteen years in time—shaping the story became easier. My biggest worry was that I’d bring them a draft and they wouldn’t be excited. I think that came because I was personally very excited writing it.

SA: I’m guessing these guys have some on stage chemistry. What makes for good chemistry on stage? How is it different when actors really click on stage?

VD: Not sure, other than the role of surprise in the process. The scary good actors love unknown moments. It’s a level of trust that puts everyone into a place of total freedom and danger. Moments can really crackle when everyone onstage trusts each other that much.  I haven’t seen that too often, but it happens.

SA: What are the challenges of bringing science fiction to the stage?

VD: The challenge of this play, with just three actors, is to create the outside world, the society that changes over 60 years. The great dystopias always shape worlds that are heartstoppingly real and internally consistent. My challenge is to do it in a play, not a novel, and with three actors.  What’s going on offstage, and how do I keep it plausible, consistent, but make sure it evolves?  

I think all of that—plus the staging, doing it all with doors on wheels—pushes the play into a space that’s intimate, political, but also weirdly epic. It’s a huge challenge and very very fun.

Join us for a reading of Delaney’s play The Ansel Intimacy on Saturday, June 22 at 7:30 p.m. in our PONCHO Forum. Tickets are free, but we strongly encourage you to reserve them in advance by calling our Box Office at 206.443.2222. Don’t forget to RSVP to the Facebook event! See you there.

Writers Group Spotlight: Scot Augustson

Scot Augustson headshot, photog Cory Kelley

Scot Augustson. Photo by Cory Kelly.

On Tuesday you met Emily Conbere. Now Emily interviews fellow Seattle Rep Writers Group playwright Scot Augustson about his play Wuf and his writing process. Our Second Annual Writers Group Showcase kicks off today with a reading of Elizabeth Heffron‘s Portugal.

EC: Your play is an adaptation of Beowulf. What draws you to this story?

SA: Well, of course, it was the monsters. There are three: Grendel, Grendel’s Mother and then the Dragon. What first got my attention was Grendel’s Mother. She is more fearsome, more dangerous, more repellent than Grendel himself. She represents a far greater physical challenge. I love that the epic gives this much power, drive, and menace to a female figure.

Then, as I read (OK, and yeah, the long boring passage that describe ships and armor, etc. I skipped) I encountered the Dragon. The Dragon comes decades after the encounter with Grendel and his mom. It occurs later in life, Beowulf is middle aged, the kingdom has been at peace, things are going well. And yet, there is this vague malaise, a dissatisfaction and sorrow. The threat of the dragon feels very modern, very existential.

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SRO Luncheon: 2013 Edition

SRO Luncheon

Some of our SRO group at the annual luncheon.

“Not all the magic happens on stage,” said Seattle Repertory Organization (SRO) President Jeannie Cantalini at this year’s SRO Luncheon. The annual celebration (and whimsical award ceremony) takes place at the Seattle Yacht Club, and honors the work SRO does to support the theatre.

Jeannie was referring to the 4,940 hours of service the group of dedicated volunteers has given to the Rep this season. Where is the magic? It’s in the two hours Maureen Healey spent in Mercer St. traffic just to make her shift at the lobby shop, it’s in the holiday baskets that Linda Willenburg filled for the interns, it’s in the feast of Greek food Laurette Simons cooked for the SRO and staff—the list goes on. In addition to the gift of their time, SRO also presented a check for $30,000 to the Rep. Revenue from the Shop at the Rep—an SRO-run entity—contributed in large part to that gift.

 

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Broadway and Walking and Food, Oh My!

The Nance

Our New York Tour had a great time seeing The Nance at the Lyceum! Photo by Sharon Barto.

The following post was written by External Relations Coordinator Sharon Barto about her experience chaperoning this year’s New York Tour

As I sat at my desk, it was just another Friday afternoon. When approached by my colleagues, I assumed it was to discuss business as usual. Wrong. “Would you be available to chaperon the upcoming SRO tour to New York?” It was music to my ears…

Every year, the Seattle Repertory Organization (SRO), our lovely group of volunteers, sponsors a week-long tour to the Big Apple to take in the sights of the city by day, and attend Broadway shows by night. Patrons of the Rep are invited to attend, and many make the trip for multiple years. We packed our bags and boarded the 6 a.m. flight on May 23rd. My main jobs: engage with my fellow travelers and take in as much as possible.

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Writers Group Spotlight: Emily Conbere

Emily Conbere photog Joanna Eldredge Morissey

Emily Conbere. Photo by Joanna Eldredge Morissey.

Last week you met Writers Group playwright Al Frank. In this interview, Frank asks his fellow playwright, Emily Conbere, about her playwriting process. This is the fifth interview in a series of eight, as we look forward to the Second Annual Writers Group Showcase, which opens this Friday, June 14 and runs through June 23.

AF: Tell us a bit about your Showcase play. 

EC: The Knocking Bird is a play about the strange and uncomfortable ways that couples transform and adapt to each other in order to stay together.

AF: What images, moods and themes are you working to evoke in this new script?

EC: The mood of this play is definitely dark; it watches a character spiral into madness as he sees his lover slowly separating from him.

AF: What is your process of discovery in the creation of a play? 

EC: Once I’m at a certain point, scenes start coming to me randomly—in the shower, while I’m falling asleep, while I’m having dinner. I have to write them down immediately or they’re lost… most of the stuff I write comes out pretty subconsciously… sometimes I don’t know what it is about until I wait a couple of days (or years) and return to it with a more objective eye.

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Writers Group Spotlight: Al Frank

Al Frank headshot

Al Frank. Photo by David A. Butterfield.

On Tuesday you met playwright and Seattle Rep Writers Group member Stephanie Timm. Now, Timm interviews her fellow playwright Al Frank. This is the fourth our of a series of eight interviews as we look forward to our Second Annual Writers Group Showcase, which takes place June 14-23.

ST: Your plays often center on characters who come from underprivileged minority and immigrant populations. What inspires you to write about people on the fringes?

AF: Actually, I don’t write about characters from underprivileged minority populations, whatever is meant by the phrase. All but one of the American characters in my plays share a condition of homelessness that has nothing to do with ethnicity or privilege. As individuals, they have flaws. They’ve fallen to an impoverished condition due to, among other things, mental instability, traumatic stress, loss, failure, illness, or simple fecklessness, and have often sought solace in drink or drug. None of the several immigrant characters in the trilogy are homeless, though two are refugees. Nor do they have issues of substance abuse. The most successful character in the cycle is an immigrant from Ghana.

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Writers Group Spotlight: Stephanie Timm

Stephanie Timm Photog Heather Bottomley

Stephanie Timm. Photo by Heather Bottomley.

FB: I’ve loved the sections of The Redress Party that you’ve brought into our group and I’m VERY excited for the reading on the June 15th. Can you talk a little bit about the play and its history?

ST: The play grew out of two scenes I wrote as writing exercises when I was in school about actors at a party after the closing night of a regional theatre run of A Streetcar Named Desire. These scenes contained all the characters and the milieu for the play as it is now. This milieu is ideal for exploring the permeable, shifty, squirmy thing we call Identity, which seems to change depending on where we are, when we are, and who we are with.  

For an actor, identity is even more multifarious than for the average person. There’s a sometimes confusing ambiguity of actor and character onstage in order to convincingly play a role, on top of the roles an actor might play in her everyday life: wife, mother, lover, mother lover, friend, co-worker, sycophant, clown… Then, there’s an actor at a party with other actor and non-actors—more layers of identity. Then, there’s an actor at a party where she has to wear a red dress like everybody else and put her coat in a big pile on a bed where anyone could grab it—a loss of identity. Then there’s identity for a playwright who is writing a play exploring identity and loss of identity through actors, characters, and crazy people who are also drunk and on drugs and having identity-shattering things happen to them—oops, I beg your pardon, my head just exploded. (Being a playwright is like having a willful, self-induced multiple personality disorder.)

My interest in making these two scenes into a longer play had initially to do with form. I’d seen a string of realistic plays that took place in living rooms in New York, and this made me want to write a surreal, anti-living room play that might seduce an audience by starting out reassuringly “real” and linear at first, but then gradually progressing (or digressing?) to shakier ground where reality, identity, and even story become unstable.  I really have no idea how to do this, though, and so it’s a big experiment that might fail or blow up in my face.

FB: What are you most hoping to learn about the play?

ST: I hope to learn whether the overall structure is working, whether there’s any emotional or visceral impact on an audience, and most of all, I hope to learn whether it’s funny or not. The milieu is theatre and actors, so my fear is that it’s just one big inside joke and inaccessible to people outside of theatre.

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