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Great SCoT actors Nathaniel Kent, Amy Landon, Jocelyn Kuritsky, Jessica Pohly and Brendan Donaldson. Photo by Kellie Fitzgerald |
Who helped William Shakespeare develop his gift for writing sonnets and plays? History denies us the details of a master wordsmith who by all appearances arrived onto the London theater scene a full-fledged star. Many theater artists of today are eager to give credit to the teachers and mentors who’ve helped them forge their talent into craft. For example, take NYU Dramatic Writing Program grad Dan Moyer who named his recently founded theater troupe after his senior high school drama teacher and mentor, Jim Shelby. This January, Shelby Company presents a repertoire of new work called Great SCot: New Plays! with contributions from three writers, each the beneficiaries of advanced writing programs. We spoke with playwrights Jonathan A. Goldberg, Raphael Bob-Waksberg and Dan Moyer on the eve of their premieres.
Shelby Company co-founder and playwright Dan Moyer, first things first: How did your company come into being and get its name?
Dan Moyer: Jim Shelby is the drama teacher at Henry M. Gunn Senior High (where myself, [Will] Brill and founding members Grayson DeJesus and Jenni Putney attended). He’s a really inspiring guy and really shaped all of our views on the art and craft of drama. Also, Shelby Company has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?
Absolutely. Shelby Company’s upcoming show includes three plays. What is the name of your play and what’s it about?
Dan Moyer: My play is called You May Be Splendid Now. And it’s about the last episode of a late night public access show called Up Late with Skip Carter that is run by a set of twins. It started out as more of a backstage thing, with lots of asides and fumbles with the program, but now it is simply the episode itself, from start to finish.
Playwright Dan Moyer (You May Be Splendid Now): “I’m always interested in exploring characters who are just a little behind.”
What inspired you to write it?
Dan Moyer: I’m always interested in exploring characters who are just a little behind. Many people use the internet to express themselves (YouTube, blogs) but what about those who are drawn to this antiquated medium? I like those sorts of people. Also, I like plays that take place late at night.
Jonathan A Goldberg: How about you? What’s the name of your contribution to Great SCot and what is it about?
Jonathan A Goldberg: My play is called Luck of the Ibis. I was inspired by the concept of narrative and new ways to tell a story. I was also very interested in how we remember and how we can change the past in our minds to make it better, happier. The play is about two sisters who run away in their teens and create a rich fantasy life that starts to blend into reality with an evil shrimp boat captain, a Chupacabra, girl detectives and the alien boss of all shrimp…the Ur-Shrimp. Into this sometimes silly world bleeds the hard realities of life on the street and the need to find safe harbor and kindness in an often cruel and senseless world.
And Raphael Bob-Waksberg: What’s the name of your play?
Raphael Bob-Waksberg: The Mike and Morgan Show. It’s about a guy remembering the last night he spent with his high school best friend, who died later that night. That sounds really depressing, but the play’s actually a lot of fun. It’s about how wonderful it is to have someone on your wavelength, even for a very brief period of time. It’s about all the things we want to say but don’t because we’re so sure there’ll be other days to say them. Again, that sounds like a downer, but trust me, come to the play, you’ll have a good time.
Playwright Raphael Bob-Waksberg (The Mike and Morgan Show): “When people die we tend to whitewash their memories rather than celebrate all the dirty, gross stuff that made them special and unique.”
What inspired you to write it?
Raphael Bob-Waksberg: I first got the idea for this play in college when I was talking with a friend about the Smiths’ song Girlfriend in a Coma. She thought it was really gross and said it represented man’s inclination to fetishize the incapacitated, like the perfect girlfriend would be one that’s in a coma. Again: college. I thought it was an interesting idea, and it stuck with me. I don’t know if it’s necessarily bad or unhealthy, but it’s true that when people die we tend to whitewash their memories rather than celebrate all the dirty, gross stuff that made them special and unique. This play kind of comes out of that.
Did you all come from a university or some other writing program? If so, what was your favorite class and what did it teach you about playwriting?
Dan Moyer: I attended NYU’s Dramatic Writing Program. When I first got
there, coming out of high school, I had a pretty limited notion of what a “well-made” play was. But then I took a class of Paul Lazar’s called “Downtown Theatre” where the students went to see a play every
Thursday. And, to me, “Downtown” theater just meant not Broadway. However, first day of class, I was told the class would be a comprehensive study of the avant-garde movement from the Dadaists up to The Wooster Group. And, you know, I was like “Great. A bunch of people spinning in circles and, I don’t know, throwing tomatoes at
each other.” But, as you can guess, I was blown away. Opened up to the complete flip side, the opposite of all I was told. When I took that class a lot really changed for me, I realized I could do a lot of stuff I was told not to do, that there was an audience out there. Also, I took a graduate writing course and in that class saw a play of Jonathan Goldberg’s Sharks of Montana that was really inspiring to me.
What about you, Jonathan?
Jonathan A. Goldberg: I received my M.F.A. from Tisch in dramatic writing. One of my favorite classes was taught at the Public Theater by Oskar Eustis and Rinne Groff. The class was in conjunction with the grad actors and outside directors. The focus was on collaboration and the complex relationship of creating art with multiple-talented artists. That’s the class where I met my director [for The Luck of the Ibis], Tom Ridgely.
Raphael Bob-Waksberg: I majored in playwriting at Bard College. It’s a great program; it’s small, so you get a lot of individual attention. There were three playwrights my year and we used to have pizza parties at the professor’s house. My favorite piece of advice that I got there was that you should always put facts in your play, little tidbits for the audience so that even if your play is horrible, the audience can say, “Well, at least I learned something, so it wasn’t a total waste of time.” I always thought that was hilarious.
Playwright Jonathan A Goldberg (Luck of the Ibis): “I love meshing styles, tones and theatrical devices to create something big, fantastic and lasting.”
What writer most influenced your understanding of drama/comedy as a student?
Raphael Bob-Waksberg: Well, the boring, true answer would be Tennessee Williams. I read The Glass Menagerie in high school and I didn’t get it, and then I read it again in college and suddenly everything clicked. I love how unafraid he was to be sentimental and how unafraid he was to be mean. I think there’s a tendency in young playwrights to try to be “cool,” to write as if they’re sitting on the sidelines at the party, observing, but sometimes you need to let your plays get a little sloppy drunk.
Jonathan A Goldberg: One of my greatest influences is Charles Ludlam, the creator of Theater of the Ridiculous. I love how he skirts the shoals of the bizarre, absurd and the amazingly meaningful to create a rich mélange of theatrical goodness. I love meshing styles, tones and theatrical devices to create something big, fantastic and lasting. In this play alone we have fights, deaths, ballets, underwater adventure, drugs, sex and rock and roll.
Dan?
Dan Moyer: William Shakespeare and Thorton Wilder.
What was the play that you saw that made you think, yeah, I want to be part of this. I think I can write this?
Dan Moyer: I wanted to be an actor from when I was very young. When I was six, I was cast as a No-Neck Monster in very reputable Bay Area theater company’s production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. And two things happened that were really influential. The first is that there were these big pictures from their previous productions all around the lobby. And I wander around during rehearsals, looking at these photos. One that always stuck out was a surreal junk yard with a man in military fatigues standing next to Abe Lincoln, looking out onto the expanse before them. And I would just look at that and think, “Okay…That’s what a play is, that is what it looks like.” As well, during that show there was this other six-year-old No-Neck Monster that I was just head over heels in love with. We would stand backstage, waiting for our entrance, and mouth the lines to one another. She would play Maggie and I would play Brick. And, of course, we didn’t understand a thing that was happening, but I did manage to piece together the fact that there was someone who was not on stage, Skipper, but was clearly a character. And this really struck me: That with theater someone can exist solely because of what is said of him or her by the other characters. History can be made tangible. Well, I mean, I didn’t comprehend it in those terms (I was too busy snickering at all the dirty words) but that idea really shook me.
Jonathan A Goldberg: The play that made me want to be a writer was The Importance of Being Earnest. I was in middle school, and I bought it mostly to spite of my mother who said, you wont like that. Not only did I love it, but I devoured everything Wilde ever wrote. I loved how he played with language and I was fascinated by dissecting his work. How he could drop in a line in the first few pages and have it pay off in the third act. Also it’s still insanely hilarious.
Are you dong any rewrites or tweaking during rehearsal?
Dan Moyer: More than I care to think about (sorry, actors!).
Raphael Bob-Waksberg: Oh, yes, absolutely. I never think anything is ever finished. I’ll probably be making changes all the way up to opening night. Maybe I’ll tailor every performance to that night’s audience. “What do you want to see in a play? Nazis riding around on horses? Oh, uh, okay, I’ll see if I can work that in.”
Jonathan A Goldberg: I’m an obsessive rewriter before rehearsal. On paper I’ll run through the play a hundred times, moving words around and taking scenes apart. I like to bring a very polished piece into the rehearsal room, because I feel that these actors are bringing their best every day, I should give them something worthy of their time. But of course you make discoveries and you adjust. All of theater is wonderful collaboration and communal creation.
If you were given a billboard in Times Square to advertise your upcoming show, and had only a few words to convince the world to go to Access Theater and check out your show, what would it say?
Dan Moyer: Free beer.
Raphael Bob-Waksberg: It would say, uh, “Come on, dude. I would totally come see YOUR play.” No, that’s terrible. I have nightmares that I don’t make it as a writer and have to go into advertising, but the sad truth is I would probably be awful at that too.
Jonathan A Goldberg: “There will be shrimp!” Or something like: “This play has everything. It’s fun, exciting, sad, beautiful, sexy ladies, hot dudes, dancing, singing, a mythical Puerto Rican monster. This play examines the heartbreaking need to create something beautiful because the world is cruel. We make art to keep us safe and to keep sane. It’s the Wisdom of Silenus. It’s everything. Just see it already!”
Thanks very much, guys.
