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The Migration Of A Play with Actor and Playwright Heather Raffo
90 Plays1 year ago
In this episode Amber talks with actor and playwright Heather Raffo about her process developing a new theatrical platform about migration in her play TOMORROW WILL BE SUNDAY. They talk about how Heather uses her acting tools for writing, and loves to create plays that challenge her like her "own purpose-built ferrari”; as well as the play as a body; her experience as the McKnight Resident at the Minneapolis Playwrights Center; and we ask a few key questions: Can we de-center where we think plays need to be ultimately?; How can we start a conversation with producers?
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Transcript
Introduction to Table Work Podcast
00:00:07
Speaker
Hello, everyone. Thank you for tuning in to Table Work, how new plays get made. My name is Amber Bradshaw, and I am a new play dramaturg arts administrator and educator. On this podcast, I chat with theater makers about the art of new play dramaturgy. Our mission is to demystify the process of creation and collaboration.
00:00:25
Speaker
explore ways to better our field, share tools to diversify and improve the work, and record what we discover.
Working Title Playwrights and Amber's Role
00:00:32
Speaker
This podcast is brought to you by Working Title Playwrights, a new play incubator and service organization based in Atlanta, Georgia, in which I serve as the managing artistic director.
Introduction to Heather Rafo and Global Issues
00:00:42
Speaker
For more about WTP and me, check out www.workingtitelplaywrights.com. If I'm a theater goer,
00:00:53
Speaker
and I got to the theater that day, chances are I had to put gas in my car. So if I'm arriving to a play like Nine Parts of Desire or Nora, and I feel really bad for those people in that play, or I want to feel for those characters in that play, it kind of doesn't matter, because I put oil in my car, I put gasoline in my car, right? And if I put gasoline in my car, it doesn't matter what my stance on the war was.
00:01:24
Speaker
Doesn't matter if I agree or disagree on whether the war was just or not. It doesn't matter if I would let the Iraqi refugee in or not. I put gas in my car.
Heather Rafo's Influence in Arab American Theater
00:01:36
Speaker
So I'd like to start today by introducing y'all to our guest, Heather Rotho. Thank you so much for joining me, Heather. Lovely to be here and loved the introduction. So exciting.
00:01:53
Speaker
So Heather is a singular and outstanding voice in the American theater whose work has been championed by the New Yorker as an example of how art can remake the world. Having helped forge a new genre of Arab American theater, she spent her career writing and embodying stories of Iraq from the lives and dreams of Iraqi women in her seminal work, Nine Parts of Desire.
00:02:17
Speaker
to the suicidal ideation of an Iraq war veteran in the opera Fallujah, to the restless longings of an Iraqi refugee architect in Nora. A multi-award winning writer and actor, she is toured nationally and internationally from the Kennedy Center to the Aspen Ideas Festival and from London's House of Commons to the US Islamic World Forum.
Migration Play Cycle and Global Themes
00:02:39
Speaker
Her newly released anthology, Heather Roffo's Iraq Plays, The Things That Can't Be Said, brings together two decades of her most groundbreaking contributions to the American theater and speaks to the bravery required to be at the forefront of a movement. Her newest migration play cycle, her most ambitious theatrical imagining and scale and scope, situates themes around migration and the global economy.
00:03:06
Speaker
Being raised in the Midwest and the daughter of an Iraqi immigrant, Rafo has committed her artistic practice to working across all kinds of borders on main stages and in rural communities, with the military and in the Middle East, in swing states, and in refugee facilities. She is uniquely positioned to explore what migration means for an ever-evolving American and global identity.
00:03:29
Speaker
So Heather, wow. So I'm really honored to have you on this podcast, and I'm really excited to hear about your process and how you work.
Heather's Creative Process and Inspirations
00:03:37
Speaker
It's exciting to be here. Thank you for having me. So I heard about your piece. Tomorrow will be Sunday when I listen to you interviewed on The Subtext, a podcast hosted by Brian James Pollock and produced by American Theater Magazine.
00:03:52
Speaker
I really enjoy that podcast and especially your episode. From a dramaturgical perspective, it was my favorite. It was so exploratory and Brian really searched through your research and your interviews with your collaborators to find a play that you are creating.
00:04:08
Speaker
which was a lot of fun. So I wanted to give a little context for sort of how I first heard about your work. Well, not really first heard about it, but heard more about it and why we're here talking today. Awesome. It was really, I really love talking to Brian over the course of such a length of time because our conversations grew as my process was growing and even being able to reflect with him
00:04:37
Speaker
It helped me articulate and be forced to articulate the things that I was thinking and feeling and how they were coming into being
Integrating Acting and Playwriting
00:04:47
Speaker
in a play. So it was a real gift to talk to Brian. That's great. It's a playwright to playwright, right? Yeah, absolutely.
00:04:56
Speaker
I'd love to hear a little bit more about your sort of intersectional career that you have as an actor and a playwright before we jump into Tomorrow Will Be Sunday. You've performed in a lot of your work and gotten tons of awards and had a long career as a successful actor. Can you kind of tell me how your life as an actor and your life as a playwright come together?
00:05:24
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I would say that I started as an actor and still consider myself an actor and think of that as kind of my primary tool system.
00:05:35
Speaker
Also, perhaps even my primary love, like the musculature from which I approach not only the theater, but just the desire to be creative really comes from an embodied place, from a wanting to have something held close, figure out why it feels vulnerable.
00:05:58
Speaker
demand of myself the bravery to put it into the world and then go through the birthing process to do it. That all feels very, very much about the body and the musculature of finding voice for something, right? And so I didn't know that writing could be that way.
Writing Methods and Actor Collaboration
00:06:22
Speaker
and be a similar process until I started writing and I started writing as an actor. I started writing because I didn't see the story I wanted to tell yet in the theater and didn't see it anywhere in the English language. Iraqi women were not on our stages. They were not part of storytelling. They were not protagonists in the English language.
00:06:49
Speaker
On top of that, there had been a war in Iraq, there had been misperception about the Middle East, there wasn't a movement of Middle Eastern American theater. So for all those reasons, I felt compelled to try to articulate some of the things I knew and felt, but I came at it hugely as an actor, which for me was a lot of research, a lot of digging into conversation,
00:07:19
Speaker
And then letting it flow out in a stream of consciousness on paper without judgment, sort of like being in a rehearsal room as an actor of like, okay, I did my research. I'm arriving to the rehearsal room.
00:07:32
Speaker
but I'm not gonna judge what comes out of me. I'm just gonna be present and go for things. And really let the director say, thank you for trying those 100 things. Can we focus now on these two, right? And so that's how my writing process went. I just wrote as if 100 things were gonna come out of me. And then in time,
00:07:57
Speaker
I lifted out what was the most essential and where I wanted to focus. So that, that continues to be a lot of how I feel like I've integrated, um, acting and writing, but I'd also say that I now that I'm, you know, close to 30 years into an acting career and I'm in middle age, I really have such a profound trust and love for actors.
00:08:24
Speaker
So there are things that will happen in my plays that dramaturgy wants to answer. And I'll say, just why?
00:08:37
Speaker
Actors know what to, actors love the open-ended question. Actors love having to make up the backstory and have all these little fruits just hanging from a tree. And it's their job to have to figure it out and put it together. And so I feel in so many ways, there's no loose ends. There's just a lot of hanging fruit.
Reflections on Performances and Iterative Writing
00:09:02
Speaker
And I love watching actors figure that out. I've had a recent experience getting to jump back into performing Nora again. And I got, so along the way of writing Nora, performing in it in the original production and watching other actors and entirely other productions, I've listened to the questions the actors have, the director has, the dramaturgs have. And it's so fun to watch how people put it together differently.
00:09:30
Speaker
I love that so much. I mean, it just resonates because I spend a lot of time telling playwrights, trust the actors. You don't need to spell this out. You know, give the actor something to chew on, right? You know, don't leave it to them to decide what your play is, but give them so much, so much juiciness to wonder about. I love that so much. I love getting clues. Yeah.
00:09:58
Speaker
little buried one-line things that don't have to tie up in bows and lead to entire themes that are just idea systems that actors know how to pick up and go, of course I would tie my shoes that way. Of course I would never clean the table. Of course I would always drop my jacket on the floor when I walk, whatever. You can almost build your whole character on knowing just one small thing.
00:10:27
Speaker
Right? Yes. Levitt, have you performed in everything you've written? I didn't perform in the opera because I definitely don't sing opera. But when I was just reading that as a play, as a written work only, preparing it
00:10:56
Speaker
preparing to pass it off to the composer, I did read in it just as one of the voices hearing it. And even just in Zoom readings recently of new work that I may or may not perform in, I did jump in in different characters because I do find it quite fun. I do love it. But yes, when I wrote Nine Parts of Desire and when I wrote Nora, I wrote those with the intention of performing in them.
00:11:25
Speaker
So both of those pieces are aligned to challenge me as a performer and to fit me like my own purpose-built Ferrari.
00:11:40
Speaker
I love that. I really know the tempo. I know where to open this up. I know how to drive this thing in a really particular way. Love seeing them driven by other people too, but they are very familiar to me. I love that. It sounds like a foundation of your process is performing
00:12:08
Speaker
in your, as your characters that you're writing, right? Like the living within those characters is how you know what's happening. You know, it sounds like. It is absolutely true that I need to live in them and embody them to know, to know what my next steps in writing and tweaking and developing are. And then I feel really comfortable passing them off for reinterpretation.
00:12:37
Speaker
I think this is such a wonderful thing to discuss because I think all playwrights need to think about what it means to perform the characters they create, right? I think more playwrights would really benefit from experiencing their characters that way.
Origins and Themes of 'Tomorrow Will Be Sunday'
00:12:56
Speaker
Agreed. And what I continue to find is that my first drafts are overwritten and fine, excitingly so. No worries about that. And that I'm cutting because they're all the things that I want to just perform and not have to say.
00:13:17
Speaker
there's all the stuff I want to leave for subtext. Or there's ways that there's ways I found in the writing, I was saying it three times, three different ways, spelling it out in search of the right one, right? Which is great, great, normal, fine. But in performance, it becomes clear that there's one best way or one most simple way or one more revealing way that challenges all the other characters or challenges the audience more.
00:13:47
Speaker
And so I've become just a huge believer in previews as long as possible, right? Like my negotiation is always how many previews can I get? And also this idea of a rolling world premiere, I think is genius because I think finding a play in three different iterations
00:14:14
Speaker
is so necessary before you can say you found the play. And I even speak that from the point of view of like, I, I workshopped Nora, um, in many different ways, but once it got to production, it had a world premiere in DC. It moved to Abu Dhabi. It moved to New York. I was rewriting ahead of every venue, reworking in previews at each venue. Um,
00:14:44
Speaker
then relaxed, didn't, you know, left the show. It had three other productions, completely different teams. I got to see all of them. COVID happened. I had three years off. Jumping back in, literally in the fall of 2022 was the time I felt like I could most fully understand the play.
00:15:13
Speaker
So wow, not that each moment wasn't a fully realized entity, they were, it's just as playwright. The gestation over all those iterations and the merging of playwright and actor and what happened this fall is I just cut more.
00:15:39
Speaker
even more than in every other iteration. I just find I kept trimming. I think it's really common for there to be just a lot of overwriting and that whole, what is the tagline, you know, writing is revising or whatever. I'm like, it's revising because we just repeat ourselves until we figure out how it needs to be said, right? It's like we're still trying to find the thing. I also hear you, some of the language you're using makes me think like,
00:16:08
Speaker
It's almost like approaching the piece almost as a body, you know, musculature and the structure of the piece, you know, like this idea of the play itself being a body.
00:16:27
Speaker
the way you're, the language you're using. And of course reading, um, you know, I read tomorrow will be Sunday in his current iteration and reading nine parts of desire. Wow. Like, wow. Just a
Questioning Empathy in Theater
00:16:40
Speaker
stunning, stunning piece of work that like, there's no, there's nothing extra.
00:16:48
Speaker
I see how you're like chop, chop, chop, chop, chop to the foundation, the core that really resonates. Yeah. Maybe what I'm also experiencing is that the thing I'm after already has the body and I'm just trying to get inside it and whittle it down so that I can
00:17:18
Speaker
Move in it act in it be be in its flesh and articulate it. I mean, I know that's that's kind of it that the cliche of the Michelangelo is right that cliche of no, I didn't decide it I didn't decide the David he says, you know, the right is there on the rock and I just found It's not trying to be a cliche but I maybe you're right that something has its own shape and flesh and
00:17:45
Speaker
And the process of just trying to articulate what that is, is the trial and error and trial and error and edit and overwrite and overwrite and edit, edit, edit, edit until the glove fits or until it's like, yeah, that's really comfortable.
00:18:03
Speaker
Ferrari to drive. But I hear too, like the rhythm and the musicality of the work is super important for you. And I think in reading and looking at Nine Parts of Desire, just on the page, I mean, it's poetry, right? It's poetry. It's really important to me. Yeah. Absolutely.
00:18:22
Speaker
Yeah, the rhythms and the beats and all of that stuff. And then the different structures of each one of the monologues and how uniquely structured each one is. All of what you're speaking about is in the work, very much so.
00:18:39
Speaker
I'd love to talk about Tomorrow Will Be Sunday. I'm really interested in the journey that this play took. Obviously, there's probably parts of that journey that you've already forgotten, but share with us a little bit about the beginning and about where you are now and who's been a part of that for you. The very beginning was being invited by the McCarter Theater to write a 10-minute play on migration.
00:19:10
Speaker
and gaining access to campus-wide symposiums on migration from which I just went and listened and listened and listened and then did research and listened. And then I kind of allowed myself the stream of consciousness overwrite and started writing scenes, knowing that the scene would only be 10
Conceptualizing a Spherical Play
00:19:32
Speaker
minutes. I wrote a lot of short scenes, two minute, five minute, just wherever in the world they took place, it was just kind of
00:19:38
Speaker
things were pouring out of me after attending the different symposiums. Right. And then what I discovered there was that I liked the idea that shorter things that spanned different places getting put next to each other would tell a certain kind of story about migration more than
00:20:06
Speaker
focusing on a single character, a single journey, the single arc, a beginning, middle, end, a crescendo, all of that. So that kind of percussive idea system started there. The other idea system that started there was my obsession with, my new obsession with economics.
00:20:29
Speaker
And that was because in listening during the symposium and having come off of doing Nora, which is a play about a refugee family and having my own family have to flee Iraq and working on nine parts for years, I was just, and having so many refugee plays kind of hit the theater market, I was really,
00:20:55
Speaker
confused by and trying to unpack the obsession of empathy in the American theater, and the good of it, and the goal of it, but also where it was failing us. And so my understanding of how refugee narratives in the media, in the theater, in the mouths of just people you know, right, or migration narratives, and this is
00:21:26
Speaker
was that it tended to land in the narrative of victim or enemy, and both tended to be accompanied by a violin, right? And so it was just like, narrative is getting played. It's literally getting played for all of us. And how are we getting to authenticity? What do we know? How can we know what we know? What's authentic?
00:21:51
Speaker
Right? And does any of this lead to our connection to it? So it's not like I'm trying to add my way to an audience and make them complicit in everything. It's just, how do we know that we're connected?
00:22:06
Speaker
Because isn't the point that these plays aren't about other people or the other, it's that it's about these people we're connected to. So on the one hand, empathy connects us, but on the other hand, it doesn't. So with a bit of investigation, I was like, I think economics is what connects us. I think I buy the coffee.
00:22:33
Speaker
And the coffee, if you travel all the way back, leads to a lot of people whose lives I've impacted, whether I'm a liberal or conservative, whether I want to say, let all the people in or don't. If I'm a theater goer and I got to the theater that day, chances are I had to put gas in my car.
00:22:58
Speaker
So if I'm arriving to a play like Nine Parts of Desire or Nora, and I feel really bad for those people in that play, or I want to feel for those characters in that play, it kind of doesn't matter, because I put oil in my car, I put gasoline in my car, right? And if I put gasoline in my car, it doesn't matter what my stance on the war was.
00:23:22
Speaker
Doesn't matter if I agree or disagree on whether the war was just or not. It doesn't matter if I would let the Iraqi refugee in or not. I put gas in my car. That's it. I put gas in my car, right? So really, that's why Tomorrow Will Be Sunday is about what it's about. So after the McCarter,
00:23:47
Speaker
I realized I had an idea I wanted to pursue but didn't know what that meant.
00:23:55
Speaker
and submitted for the McKnight residency at the Playwright Center. And in my submission, I said, I want to create a new theatrical platform. And I also said, I don't know what that means. I want to create it about migration. And these are my questions. And this is what I'm curious about. And I want to create a new theatrical platform because I want a new platform, but I also want a new way of working.
00:24:26
Speaker
with process that's driven by curiosity, not by what's the play about, here's a well-made play, it's delivered, will we read it at the theater and will you maybe produce it someday? I went, I don't know if this play is producible. I don't know. I just know that I've worked in rural parts of Michigan and I've worked in universities in Iraq. And I've done it back to back
00:24:54
Speaker
Right? I was in a classroom in rural Pennsylvania, and the next week I was in a classroom in a university in Iraq asking the students the same thing. Right? Hearing answers that were both similar and entirely different. And I'm like, this is a way of working that defies how we make plays. Right?
00:25:23
Speaker
I am the bridge that has been holding this borderless way of working. And I'm a bit exhausted. I need to play in a way of working where the borders are off in the play itself, right? So that I'm not writing the Iraqi play and taking it across America and going, see, I'm a good bridge builder.
00:25:50
Speaker
now do you understand Iraqi people or vice versa doing the same, right? Like I wanna play that like,
00:25:56
Speaker
centers everybody and de centers them at the same time and allows us to see our connection. Right. So, so that this, what is a new theatrical platform? Okay. At the moment, years later now, after a great two years spent at the playwright center, one was a COVID year. One was leading up to COVID year and in COVID year. So it's kind of like my one year residency got, got stretched out over to, which was super. What I have now is I have what I call a spherical play.
00:26:27
Speaker
It's just a sphere. It's not a story. It's not a straight line. It's a sphere. It will eventually look circular and spherical. It has scenes that take place around the world. It could be a 90 minute play. It could be a 10 hour play. It could be an immersive play. It could be a proscenium play.
00:26:53
Speaker
It's just made up of all these scenes that take place around the world. It follows migration. It follows stories about migration told with an underpinning of economics. And its organizing principle is, I'm still in pursuit of, but it follows currencies and currents. So I think its organizing principle will always be what currency
00:27:23
Speaker
I put in into an algorithm on the day I'm saying, what version do you want? And what I mean by what version do you want? My idea is, hey, wouldn't it be cool to have theatrical partners across the world? And nobody has to have a big financial burden or a big footprint. It's just any given location.
00:27:48
Speaker
like Arizona or like El Paso, like Sulaymania in Northern Iraq, wherever, Oslo, right? Portugal, Lisbon. I'm there, I'm researching, I write a scene. That scene becomes the Lisbon story.
00:28:06
Speaker
in this global story. What have I done in my research? I've uncovered the economic and personal reason for why people move and what Lisbon has to do with the global order, but I've done it in a deeply personal way that connects to Lisbon, right? So that piece, that scene just always exists
00:28:31
Speaker
in this spherical play. But let's say the person that wants to do the play, the theater that wants to do the play, is in El Paso. Right? So El Paso has its own scene. They want a 90-minute play.
00:28:50
Speaker
What is the currency of El Paso? Is it the river? What is the currency? Is it a border? What is the currency that El Paso gives away? I don't know yet. I don't have the answer. I'm just saying, if I, once you find it, that becomes part of the algorithm from which then 12 other scenes that allow you to have a beginning, middle and end get formed around it.
Local Adaptations and Global Connections
00:29:12
Speaker
And that's a purpose made play.
00:29:15
Speaker
for El Paso made up of scenes that have been written over time and in all these places, right? So each locale gets a world premiere, really.
00:29:26
Speaker
Each locale gets their own purposely made play through an algorithm I find that allows the thing that makes that locale tick become the center from which all these other stories have to rotate, right? Like I'm finding the access per different locale, but the stories themselves have been written over time and can continually evolve and can expand and contract. So the play is growing the way migration is growing.
00:29:56
Speaker
And then the other thing that I find very unique about it is that those audience members that get curious because they saw that 90 minute, let's call it a proscenium play in El Paso, get access to hopefully someday maybe an immersive web platform.
00:30:15
Speaker
that all these scenes that have been written in all these different locales get filmed and launched into something and then they go, oh great, I saw those 90 minutes, but now I get to go on a deep dive on a real spherical exploration of all these other
00:30:31
Speaker
productions or film scenes, or even if it's just the script, somehow it's right. Like you're on National Geographic's genealogical website, but it's full of scenes. I don't know, something like that, something virtual and immersive, I think would be really cool. So that's, that's why it's a play cycle is because it's ever evolving. It grows per location. Um,
00:30:59
Speaker
But I still see it very much as a play. Any theater that wanted to do it, I'm like, okay, I'll give you a 90 minute play. It'll have a beginning, middle, and end. The end will always be in a climate future location. It's where we're going. Where we're going is where water will be. That's where we're going. We're going to Michigan. We're going to Minnesota.
00:31:23
Speaker
we're going likely to Russia. Like where are the Great Lakes? Where is the fresh water? That's where we're all going. Maybe we're going to outer space. Like literally it's always going to end there. We're always starting somewhere that would feel like the cradle of civilization, the banks of the Tigris Euphrates, the banks of the Nile.
00:31:47
Speaker
The Ganges, like we're starting in these places where things started and we're going to where we're all going. And the places we hit along the way is because we're following a currency, whether it be oil, whether it be water, whether it be data, whether it be education, whether it be care or love or whatever. Whatever currency I say is like that theater wants to follow that currency. Great. We're going to follow that currency. Here's 90 minutes of that.
00:32:17
Speaker
So I absolutely love and am very excited by this idea that you have. It's beautiful. And it's not just an idea, it's happening. It's in the middle of the idea. But how exciting. So I'm from Michigan and I
00:32:38
Speaker
live in Brooklyn, um, and have been making theater in New York, but, or I shouldn't say I have been, I've done theater in New York, but I've been trying to make theater elsewhere and bring it to New York. I've been trying to make a lot of theater in Michigan. And what's very interesting to me is, um,
00:33:00
Speaker
I just had, as I said, I had the experience of performing in Nora at Detroit Public Theater and got to experience the most diverse audience of my career.
00:33:10
Speaker
And I think that says a ton because I've been a lot of places across the United States, right? What I mean by the most diverse audience of my career is that we have the largest Arab population anywhere in the world outside the Middle East because they live in Dearborn, which is a suburb of Detroit.
00:33:30
Speaker
we have the largest caldan population anywhere in the world caldanza iraqi christians because so many have fled and now live in a suburb of detroit detroit is one of the biggest african-american populations in the united states michigan is also
00:33:46
Speaker
full of white people. It's a swing state. People are liberal and conservative. So we literally had liberals and conservatives and Muslims and Christians and blacks and whites and a lot of other immigrants that would define themselves in a lot of other different ways. And what I mean by diverse is we did an alley production, so they were looking at each other. They were the walls of this character's house.
00:34:15
Speaker
They didn't think the same way or agree. A lot of them were not theater goers, so they weren't even comfortable necessarily being there. And what is very different for me as also a New York artist is our audiences are incredibly racially diverse. They're not intellectually diverse.
00:34:41
Speaker
They tend to have a same belief system and they tend to have a similar economic background to be able to afford the ticket prices that I can't afford in New York or be a student that can get a student rate, right? Or be part of the arts community. But even when you mix all those things together, there's not a whole lot of intellectual diversity. Michigan was
00:35:11
Speaker
the most diverse audience I've ever had access to. And the conversation was on fire. When we would wanna talk back, they would stay for an hour and they didn't wanna go even after that. And it always started with this part of the play moved me or that part of the play moved me, but it pretty much went straight from there to testimonial. It was like church. Their story, what happened to them, why?
00:35:40
Speaker
And that mix of true diversity with willingness to share their own story, wanting to share their own story, just felt like the most incredible reason to do theater anywhere in the world.
00:35:59
Speaker
Right? And I think that when we zoom way out and we go, and that's a swing state, you know, you're in Georgia, you're in a swing state. Like the point, the point, I mean, I'm just really, I'm from Michigan, so I'm really involved in swing states. Point is that we have these conversations in places where
00:36:21
Speaker
conversations can be so exciting, can be like fire. God, yes. That sounds amazing. Amazing. This is one of the best experiences of my life by far. I mean, I've had a lot of amazing experiences. It just was still one of the top of the top. And wanting to center that, wanting to
00:36:45
Speaker
wanting to proclaim to the American theater that I found the center of the world.
Audience Engagement and Inheritance of Plays
00:36:51
Speaker
And I found the center of the world for this play. And it wasn't in New York. And I felt that so strongly that I literally called up American Theater Magazine and said, you need to do a story about this.
00:37:07
Speaker
This play in this community at this time, amidst diverse audience, because this is the center of the world, from my humble point of view, having been a lot of plays, like this conversation is where it's at. Can we de-center where we think plays need to be ultimately?
00:37:36
Speaker
Right? What we think the goal is. Yeah, I am really resonating with this conversation about empathy and like this idea that that, you know, going to the theater creates empathy. But I actually think that what you're talking about is going to the theater
00:37:59
Speaker
to be seen and to see others and to be heard and to hear others and to share in these experiences. It's like, that's kind of what I hear that experience being. It's like they saw the piece and then they needed to be a part of it sort of by telling their story, almost like they're adding to the play in a way. I mean, was that the experience for you or what was the experience for you in that?
00:38:29
Speaker
What do you think was happening for them? I mean, obviously they're processing what they've seen, but the nature of their testimonial, right? Yeah. The word that one audience member offered that has stuck with me strongly is she felt she inherited the piece. Wow. And I went, wow. Because inheritance meant she was carrying it.
00:38:55
Speaker
inside with lineage, with attachment, DNA. That is exactly what it felt like was happening, was that people were inheriting and then working with their own DNA and coming up with their own experience.
Diverse Storytelling and Personal Connections
00:39:18
Speaker
that was unique to them, that was about them, that yes, they empathized or didn't with the characters on the stage. Yes, they empathized or didn't with the things other people were speaking at the talkback. But the thing that was discombobulated inside them or was revealed to them inside them was about their own DNA.
00:39:45
Speaker
And that felt really exciting and about the kind of conversation I wanted to have with them. I love that. It also makes me think about always wanting to encourage playwrights to tell their story. And that can be so many things, right? This idea of telling your story.
00:40:06
Speaker
This is not limited to one lifetime, right? It's an inheritance of generations. There's so many stories that you one person can tell. What did you, since you read the Tomorrow Will Be Sunday, where did it go for you? Where did your spirit, mind, like what would be your riff if you had to like describe just the experience of reading that?
00:40:36
Speaker
Hmm. Well, I definitely felt the pieces being short, right? This quickness. So the experience, it happened so quickly almost. I felt like it sort of flew by, right? So that was part of it. And that to me felt like,
00:40:57
Speaker
a migration pattern in itself. And so I felt like the play took me very much on that journey of migration within it, but not necessarily individually. It was like the play had a migration of its own. As we talk about, as each of these people
00:41:21
Speaker
share their experience. And I think one of the things I really loved and maybe it was because I think anybody potentially has had this experience is the grocery store experience that you read, of course, and I got to hear you read in the subtext podcast. And this like,
00:41:42
Speaker
wanting to connect with people and not knowing how or not knowing if it's even possible. That to me was very resonant. I feel like we're
00:42:00
Speaker
We're getting further and further away from communal life, and I think it's very isolating, and I felt that. I really felt that personally, and I felt that as I was reading it. And just so much heart. There was so much heart all throughout. The love for every single character. And also, I loved that you had, this is in a swing state. This is not in a swing state.
00:42:27
Speaker
You know, you had very specific, this scene is here, this scene is here, which of course I've already said I'm really interested in at this point as a dramaturg. It felt to me like it was a, like a, not a collage at all because I don't, I don't really know
00:42:52
Speaker
how that would lay out. But for me, I really felt like there was an entire world within the play in a way that was bigger and more expansive than what I am used to in reading plays. And it felt really expansive. Yeah. Does that answer your question?
00:43:19
Speaker
And I know, too, you worked with the Playwrights Center for two years, you said, on this piece. Wow. But what was beautiful and generous about Hailey and Jeremy at the Playwrights Center is the way they did hold it and the way they
00:43:39
Speaker
they also kept curious about my process and then changed their own process and said, hey, the world is, the theater world is pivoting virtually in all these ways and maybe we should have a whole new program designed for things that are, might have other
00:44:06
Speaker
Tangents, other aspects, other ways of being in the world. Not that this is meant to be a virtual play, but even if it's being, just what if? What if some part of it is being considered in other forms? So they kind of, I think, used the play as a reason to pivot to
00:44:25
Speaker
adding other aspects to their program and wondering about different ways
Barriers and Exploratory Processes in Theater
00:44:29
Speaker
of working. And so that was year two. And that was when we said, yes, now there are these three, four times we are in residence, even if that residency is virtual, because nobody was, you know, physical still. And we got a lot done. We got a lot done dramaturgically.
00:44:54
Speaker
over that period. I think that's amazing. I think it's so key in new play dramaturgy that there is just incredible amounts of flexibility and adaptability. I mean, if you want to stay curious, you have to stay open, I think, and adaptable. Yeah. I mean, Jeremy and Haley are exceptional humans and true professionals at understanding what the playwright needs and being
00:45:23
Speaker
Um, being able to pivot in the most interesting ways, like my trust for them is, is enormous. Um, particularly in just how they talk to playwrights, meet them on their own terms and just go, okay, well this play this time sounds like you need a this thing. Right. And even if they've never done that before they find, they find a way to allow for process to be whatever it's going to be.
00:45:54
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you really just got to be comfortable just trying a bunch of new stuff just all the time. But you know, it's something I love to do. So I always, people are like, how do you do this? And I'm like, it's different every time. I'm sorry, it's not a simple answer.
00:46:10
Speaker
But that's why I'm doing this podcast actually is because I want people to hear everything, you know, because that's what I have, you know, I've seen just an incredible amount of completely different processes and they all worked, you know, so I think that people need to trust the artist to
00:46:31
Speaker
figure out what they need and ask for it, and also be able to be in the room with everybody and know that it's going to be kind of intense, right? So yeah, I love that. It's great to hear. Big shout out to Minneapolis Playwrights Center for everything they do for the new play world and for playwrights. It's really incredible.
00:46:56
Speaker
Is there a way that the American theater can give back to new play artists that are working in this field right now? What I crave more of is the ability to approach a theater with my curiosities and say, could we make a process built on these curiosities versus
00:47:16
Speaker
What do you want to write a play about? Show us the first draft. Exactly. We're going to discuss, right? I want to go in with my curiosities and discuss them and then bring in scenes and discuss them and then bring in a draft and discuss. Yes. So I think that we would get, as playwrights, we would have access to an ongoing conversation that was more mutual.
00:47:49
Speaker
But like with Nora, it was, there was no process for me in the American theater. So I went and built it outside the theater. I went and did all the things and then brought it back as the draft. Here's the draft. Do you want to do any worth it when you do it? Do you want like, right? Right. Why not work on that draft with me? Right. And then rounds of notes and those rounds of
00:48:16
Speaker
I don't know if we'll do it." Which shouldn't add another character because Ibsen's had another character and I'm like, oh my God. Is that literally how we're approaching the American theater with your draft to get you? Then there was this whole process after that of having to pitch the draft.
00:48:41
Speaker
and convince people that the draft could be worth the thing when you're not in the pipeline because it wasn't in the pipeline, so they didn't develop it, right? So I've never been in the pipeline. I don't know what it means to be in the pipeline. I broke everything outside of it and then begged my way to the table. And it takes years to beg your way to the table every single play, every single time. Somehow I've managed it. But I don't...
00:49:10
Speaker
It's not a conversation. It's not a collaboration. So I don't know. And I know other writers have been able to be in process with theaters, and that's great. And then they probably feel like they have a home, which is probably a superb feeling. I mean, I think that would be super. That's just not a feeling I've had.
00:49:36
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's a lot to be said for making space for the real process before the first draft is finished. That's a lot of the hard work. And if producers are expecting playwrights to just come in with that, where do they expect the playwrights to get the support that would have a draft worth reading? I mean, it's just, it's incredible what you've done on your own. I just want to give you a lot of credit.
00:50:03
Speaker
Thank you. But the thing that I find more curious is deeply curious and deeply hurtful is that the processes you've described it is fine. If they want artists to go away and figure it out and then come back with a draft, so be it. But there was a time where I'm like, so I have this draft of Nora, I know it needs things. I'm going into community. I'm going to the Arab American National Museum, the only Arab museum in our country.
00:50:34
Speaker
to do a residency in a workshop where I'm gonna read it and see what the Arabs think of it, see what the Muslims think of it, see what the, like just get feedback. Like these are not avid theater goers. We're not gonna like, right? It's just to shake it up and mush it about and see what happens. And the theater I was in discussion with at the time found that so threatening.
00:50:58
Speaker
that the potential offer that something was on the table that they might help develop it was suddenly off the table. So sometimes our theaters are really threatened by other voices being in the process. I'm like, dude, to say it was developed in the largest Arab community anywhere in the nation helps you.
00:51:25
Speaker
Like that's A, that's really good press, but that's also like saying, you put it through the fire and it worked. Or you put it through fire and it didn't work, so we changed it. Like, you want this. I was trying to help them understand that they should want this. That this was good for them, even for just publicity reasons, let alone it was gonna make the play better. It was too threatening.
00:51:51
Speaker
Offer withdrawn, offer withdrawn. And I went, wow. If that's the state of development in the American theater, I don't know how I'll ever make a play. I guess I'm just going back to the museum every time and I do. They're great. It's the best place to develop work as a Middle Eastern writer that wants to fire their work in a Middle Eastern community. It's pretty great.
00:52:19
Speaker
I hear you. I hear you on that. I think there's a lot of, you know, this conversation between playwright and producer, I think really needs to be developed, honestly. Like, I don't think there is one, you know, it's something we've been talking a little bit about is how can we start that conversation?
00:52:40
Speaker
in a way that might actually achieve something, which of course is a huge challenge. But it is something that I'm interested in because I do think even dramaturgs are considered a threat too. And it's like, why are we
00:52:57
Speaker
a threat.
Community Engagement and Cultural Resonance
00:52:58
Speaker
We shouldn't be a threat to the producer. I can see how the playwright could be a little worried because dramaturgs used to be an agent of the institution. But new play dramaturgs today that are doing the kind of work I'm doing, which is really more exploratory and curious, are in the room to be curious and also to make sure the playwright is being served in the ways that they need to be. And that is often taken as a threat. And I think to me, the question is, why?
00:53:28
Speaker
Why? Why would that be a threat? I think it's a good question for people to be asking. So are there any theaters or potentially organizations or podcasts that you might recommend people check out? Anything especially important to you right now?
00:53:52
Speaker
Well, Detroit Public Theater is especially important to me right now. It's especially important to me that they have four female co-artistic directors that share the vision, burden, weight activities.
00:54:16
Speaker
I think that they're important to me because of all the reasons I said that Detroit felt like a deeply diverse community to be in conversation with as a theater maker.
00:54:30
Speaker
And it felt, what felt amazing is that they're seven years old, so they're very new, but they also just this year had moved into a new space. So that kind of ups your game in a different way or creates, just creates physical, spiritual space connection with audience in a new way. So it's like they've, they've grown hugely and now they're taking another growth step. But what I could feel was the audiences they've built.
00:54:59
Speaker
they've built a very vocal relationship with where audiences vocalize during shows, want to be part of responding alongside the performances. And I find that thrilling because coming from an Arab community, they do that as well.
00:55:22
Speaker
similarly to how the African-American community does church. Like it is, it is a lot of call and response. So I felt something happening there that was unique and felt true to the Middle Eastern communities that I work in. And I really liked, I really liked building, I really liked,
00:55:51
Speaker
Having been a Middle Eastern theater artist now working in the professional theater for 30 years, it felt like a deep homecoming to finally go back and act for the first time in the heart of my own community.
00:56:12
Speaker
And I do love the process of going far afield and figuring things out around the United States and internationally. But for me, it was amazing to take everything I've learned in 30 years and bring it back into conversation with what I'd call my people.
00:56:34
Speaker
right? And to discover they were indeed my people and to feel supported by my people because sometimes that doesn't happen. Like sometimes even performing for family is the hardest thing we'll ever do. Like it's easier to perform an Abu Dhabi than perform for your mom or your brother or whatever. So right? So I think that
00:56:55
Speaker
Um, yes, I would encourage everyone to, to celebrate, uplift, look into the work that Detroit Public Theater does, but, but the flip side of that is for artists everywhere to, to, um, engage in both directions and engage in the place that is far outside them. Right. That is so different from them. And then to.
Upcoming Performances and Social Media Outreach
00:57:24
Speaker
to continue to touch back with home and what that means and to investigate all that's in between. So where can listeners connect with you and keep up with you? Oh, wow. I suppose social media, Instagram, and Facebook are good places to friend me because I post a lot about the work I'm doing.
00:57:51
Speaker
Um, in the immediate I'm doing to, for the very first time I'm getting in a room live with directors and actors live.
00:58:02
Speaker
working on tomorrow will be Sunday. First, March 4th at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn in the suburb of Detroit, and then at the Kennedy Center on April. What day is it in April? April 12th, I believe. Yep, Wednesday, April 12th. And both of those will be concert readings in development
00:58:31
Speaker
workshops, right, but they will be there will be live musicians, there will be actors embodying the words, it's going to be a tremendous way for me to take a big step with
00:58:43
Speaker
what this piece is becoming. That sounds really exciting. Your first live experience, you've been working on this for quite a while. Wow. That's amazing. I'm so glad that you have support for this piece. And I just want to personally say I'm really excited about it. I'd love to support you in any way I can. And if you ever want to come down to Atlanta, you know, and check out our community, we're
00:59:09
Speaker
It's an incredible community here. There's just so much passion and curiosity. I feel very lucky to be here in Atlanta and get to work with the artists here. I would love to. Yeah, absolutely. Well, we should talk more about it. I'd love to have you come down.
00:59:25
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, Heather, thank you so much. It has been such an honor talking to you. I hope this will not be our last conversation. This has been so fantastic. And folks, I'm your host, Amber Bradshaw, and I will chat with you next time. Thank you so much for joining us, Heather. That was awesome. Really, really treasured to meet you and to be in conversation. Thank you. Thank you.
00:59:51
Speaker
Thank you listeners for tuning in to Table Work, How New Plays Get Made with Amber Bradshaw. This podcast was brought to you by Working Title Playwrights. If you like what you've heard today, support this podcast and all our initiatives by leaving us a review, following us, and or consider making a tax-deductible donation to Working Title Playwrights at www.workingtitelplaywrights.com.