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We loved Goldie, Max & Milk by Karen Hartman -- the other night at ACT. Was so funny and moving! A truly wonderous night -- even at music stands the play carries you into this crazy real world, the uncontrolable, unschedulable, unpredicatble one that YOU live, for real.
Carrie Paff rocked so bad as Max and the entire cast -- along with Jonathan Moscone directing -- were wonderous! Thank you to Dena Martinez, Carrie Paff, Jeri Lynn Cohen, Ryan Tasker and Kate Jopson for your guts!

If you missed, be aware -- these readings are wonderful magic: see 100 Planes by Lila Rose Kaplan on Dec 15 @ Shotgun!

Interview with BAPF Playwright Lauren Yee

PF: Can you talk a little about the inspiration for Our Peculiar Institution and your process in writing it?

Lauren Yee: I wanted to write a play about minstrelsy, and I spent a month at the American Antiquarian Society in Massachusetts actually researching source material from 19^th century minstrel shows. The play, ultimately, is not a minstrel show, but it springs out of a close investigation of the time period where minstrelsy was an acceptable and, honestly, extremely popular form of entertainment. What I tried to do was mine that mindset in a 21^st century context and in doing so, I began to question the reductionist attitude towards morality that exists nowadays. It’s universally acceptable to say that slavery was bad and people should be free; yet, we continue to see a world where these antiquated, morally objectionable practices live on in subtler forms.

For me, revision is always a significant part of the writing process, since so much of what the play is most centrally “about” usually becomes clear by my second or third crack at the play. When I write, I will typically come up with far more material than I need, and a majority of my time will be spent culling this material, rewriting scenes, and filling in holes.

For Our Peculiar Institution, I basically followed this path, but also started with several elements I knew I wanted to include and then figured out different ways to make these pieces logically fit. Music—one song in particular--was one element that I was hoping to fit in, and a minstrel archetypal character was another.

PF: Some of us saw your play Ching Chong Chinaman at Impact last fall or may be familiar with some of your other work. Where do you feel this play fits with your work. How is it different from other plays you’ve written? What were some of the challenges of this piece?

LY: A sense of heightened realism runs throughout my work and often this translates into something lighter and comedic, as with Ching Chong Chinaman. While significantly more realistic and linear in its structure than some of my other work, Our Peculiar Institution also draws from this vein of lightness, which I like to think of it as “cheerfulness in the face of absurdity.”

Obviously, though, one of the challenges of writing this particular piece is my unfamiliarity with many different aspects of the play—geography, time period. In putting characters into absurd, unlikely situations, you have to grapple with balancing a rather off-kilter tone with chronological and geographic accuracy. Also, in my Asian American-themed work, I have a certain surefootedness that I didn’t have here, delving into issues that were specifically about the relationships between African Americans and whites, then and now. The wisdom is that you write about what you know, and for me, the challenge was finding something I could relate to within the story I wanted to tell.

PF: Given that you’ve grown up in the Bay Area theatre community and have recently begun to experience (and have success!) in other cities and other theatre communities, how would you characterize the Bay Area theatre scene? What do you feel it has done for you as an artist?

LY: The closeness of the Bay Area theater community is something that has always appealed to me. It’s more manageable, and as much as we bemoan the lack of X available to us here, it’s a place that has a little bit of everything.

Still, logistically, just the way that the Bay Area is laid out often makes it difficult to foster the kind of energy that you need for a healthy theater community. You don’t have a single transportation system like New York, where you can get from one side of the Bay to the other for two dollars, and that hinders the actors and the audiences from getting to where they want to be. I also think we in the Bay Area have a slight complex about being so far from New York—note how excited Bay Area folk are when a show transfers to New York.

Also, as someone who frequently writes for actors of color, I get anxious sometimes wondering whether I will be able to get the right people I need for my plays and whether that will ultimately interfere with productions.

PF: You’ve got a lot of new things coming up. What are you excited about and what’s next for you?

LY: In 2010, Ching Chong Chinaman gets two more productions, at New York’s Pan Asian Rep and Seattle’s SIS Productions, so it’ll be fun to see still more interpretations of the play.

And I’ll be heading to San Diego in the fall to start my MFA in playwriting at UCSD. It’s a tiny program (with one or two people in a class every year) with the resources to keep me busy and also help me build the body of work I need to move onto the next step in my career.

But I expect I’ll be in the Bay Area pretty frequently; it’s hard to stay away.

Interview with Martha Jane Kaufman

BAPF Playwright Martha Jane Kaufman was interviewed by Sonia Fernandez, PF Literary and Administrative Director.

Sonia Fernandez: How did you get started on your BASH! Play, House and Junction?

Martha Jane Kaufman: The election of Barack Obama led to a lot of conversations about how we were moving into a post-race world. But I still saw racism built into the worlds around me, particularly working in Oakland Public Schools. As a white person, I wanted some models and approaches for resistance so I started researching the underground railroad. I was interested in the roles and approaches of white people in that struggle. I found a lot of fascinating stories, but, of course, the characters I found were not simply heroes. In many ways they reflected the racism that they were resisting. This is clearer nearly 200 years later and allowed me to see how we are all steeped in the attitudes of our time. When the government and culture says that you can own another human being what does it take to start to see that person as human? I think this is a very important question for our time because slavery is not that far behind us and we are still dealing with that inheritance. Of course, my piece is written from my perspective as a white person and would not be the story everyone would tell. The questions that have come to the surface as I’ve been engaging with these characters and stories have allowed me to look more critically and compassionately at the present.

SF: You’re a recent transplant to the Bay Area. What’s it like to be here at this moment in time, and how has it affected your work?

MJK: Well, I’ve started taking astrology a lot more seriously… (lol) No, but actually, I’ve found the writing/performance/theater scene here in the Bay to be edgy, imaginative and insightful. People working in all media are constantly blending genres, mixing media, and eroding the boundaries between disciplines, which is how I feel most comfortable as an artist since I am also a dancer. I’m inspired by how people here manage to do a lot with very little in terms of financial support, space, materials, and time. I’ve found myself surrounded by articulate, creative, and socially conscious artists making street theater, puppets, spoken-word performances, and all of it feeds my work and ideas. Plus, friends invite me to tackle hard questions in my work, hold me accountable and push my boundaries. And, everyone wants to collaborate! Since I got here less than a year ago, I’ve worked on a puppet show for a community garden, a performance piece in which the costumes were made from newspapers, and two dance/spoken-word pieces that were staged in the corner of a living room. And of course, the amazing weather and freshly grown food only feeds a writers soul …


SF: What about the festival itself?

MJK: I love spending time writing and talking with other writers so I am excited about that aspect. And I’m also excited to work with a dramaturg [Jayne Wenger] and actors on this piece - one that still feels so fresh to me- I’ve never done something like this before. Usually I let ideas incubate a lot longer before bringing a director and actors into the picture. I didn’t know my director, Molly Aaronson Gelb, but as it turns out, she also went to Wesleyan, so we share an artistic vocabulary right from the start. I’m very eager to get started with the process!

SF: What do you have on the horizon?

MJK: After the festival I’m going to return to a full length piece I’ve been working on for a while, called A Live Dress, that focuses on the Yiddish Theater, but from a very contemporary point of view, and plays with gender roles, sexuality and the blending of post post modern and traditional art forms. Like other of my plays, the world of the play crosses the time/space continuum. I’m also thinking about the pros and cons of attending graduate school in playwriting – I’ll let you know what I decide!