WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 645 - Annie Baker

Episode Date: October 11, 2015

Playwright Annie Baker is one of the most original and exciting voices in American theater. She’s already a Pulitzer Prize winner and counts super-producer Scott Rudin as one of her most ardent supporters. But as she tells Marc, Annie just wants to write plays for the type of people who don’t want to go see plays in the first place. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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What the fuck is going on? Okay. You can let your kids listen now. I hope your commute's going well. Your bike ride's going well. If you're swimming and listening, that's interesting. Perhaps you're in the shower, in the bathroom, or cleaning something. I hope it's all going all right. And thank you for listening to my show in your cubicle, trying to look like you're working.

Glad to be here. Today on the show, the amazing Annie Baker is here. Pulitzer Prize winning playwright of the flick which is currently running at the barrow street theater in new york i saw her other play john a big fan of hers and i believe this marks the first time we've had a playwright on the show also australia not excited about flying there it's gonna happen i'm coming i'll be when you're listening to this i may be suspended in the air moving fast over water a lot of water not my favorite thing don't know i look it's gonna be what it's gonna be i'm gonna get there we've made some uh we like it looks like

sydney and melbourne are okay with the ticket sales. Should be about 1,000 or so folks at each one. You can still get tickets. You can go to WTFpod.com slash calendar for tickets. Brisbane, we've accommodated the lack of ticket sales by moving to a smaller venue. Right within the same structure, so you don't have to do anything too extreme, but it'll be nice. It'll be better. It's going to be okay.

It's better than canceling. Looking forward to be better. It's going to be okay. It's better than canceling. Looking forward to being there. I'm going to be funny. I'll probably be tired, loopy. I will not have a clear idea of where I am or what my body clock is doing, but maybe something interesting will come out of that. Maybe I'll have an emotional meltdown on stage in Australia. God knows I've done it it before but that was decades ago it'll be compelling might not be the show you expect but we'll make something of it won't we australia i believe we will i had a therapist back in san francisco when i lived there in the early 90s guy named jonathan rosenfeld and i i've quoted him here before uh he once said to me that uh i don't

remember exactly what the context was but i never forgot He said, there's no such thing as boredom, only fear. And that thing is sort of kind of like rolled that around in my mental mouth for a long time, you know, kind of sucked on that with my brain for a while. And it's always up there. And I thought it was very provocative and insightful. So somebody had told him that I had said that or I'd quoted him on the show. And he reached out to me through the direct message function on Twitter. We were actually able to have dinner the other night. He was here in L.A. on business. I hadn't seen him in over 20 years, really. It's probably been that long. And when I was seeing him as a therapist, he was just working on his Ph.D.

Seemed like a fairly uh a bit of a dark dude i felt like we had common things uh we shared a disposition but maybe that was just part of him enabling me uh the the benefit of transference for the sake of uh of therapy so it's kind of weird to see this man who uh who was my therapist not that much older than me so many years later. And he's sort of gone beyond therapy, did a lot of work with family therapy and setting up a new style of family therapy practices over the years. But this is the thing. This is the thing. After we talked for a while, he tells me that meditation changed his life. And I've heard this a few times. And it's not specific.

It doesn't need to have a label in terms of what brand of meditation. But meditation as a practice changed his brain, changed his life. So I downloaded a meditation app. And maybe I'll get to that. I know it's just about breathing and sitting still and turning off your brain. I think I'm capable of that. My intellectual brain doesn't think there's any benefit to it. But why not just try it?

I think I've tried it a few times in my life, but I'm really hearing some good shit about this. So look forward to that. The possibility of a meditated Marc Maron. How is that even fucking possible? Jesus, man. Look, here we go let's talk about this about the um the lauren michaels interview looking for a some sort of uh closure or or acknowledgement justice whatever it may be. I realize some of you are new to the show, and you might not understand why having Lorne Michaels as a guest on my show,

or me talking to Lorne Michaels, is as important as it seems to be. Here's the deal. Almost since the start of this show, I've talked about the SNL audition I had with Lorne. This was like 1994, 95. It played a big role in my psyche, and it served as a point of connection for me and a lot of people that I've had on this show. And what I mean by that is I've had a lot of people who have been on SNL or have auditioned for SNL, and I am constantly looking for information about Lorne Michaels. and I am constantly looking for information about Lorne Michaels. I had this one meeting with him so many years ago and it's defined my entire sense of the man

and I'm looking to put him together as a human being through the stories of others and I'm always looking for bad things. I'd like to sort of hang a certain amount of evil and sensitivity on the man or at worst a bit of a mind fucking this has been hanging over me for decades and the first time i talked about it it was all the way back in episode 45 of this show of wtf i told the lauren michaels audition story for the first time at the urging of my guest

one of the founding members of the upright citizens brigade matt walsh and this is a clip of matt provoking me to tell the story that has become sort of an obsession and a signature and a underlying theme of the duration of this podcast so this is matt walsh and myself on episode 45 of wtf you have a great lauren michael story have you told it on air i don't know if i've told it here do a quick tell just real quick that's one of my favorite stories of yours i'm pimping the host oh okay so what happens is you know i auditioned for snl they make me jump through a few hoops. Marcy Klein sees me do stand-up, and then she wants to see me again.

She brings Lorne to the comic strip. He sits there and watches me do stand-up, and then they take me to the studio. It was Conan's studio, actually, and do a screen test with me, and then I have a meeting with Lorne. Yeah. And the thing about the meeting with Lorne, at that time I was smoking a lot of pot, and I was reading one of Bruce Wagner's books. You know, he writes about Hollywood. And I was really sitting there because you sit for hours.

And it was just me and Tracy Morgan. Because he was meeting Lauren that day, too. And his hair was so shiny. Like, he looked, you know, like, it was, like, perfect. Like, gelled? Yeah, it was just like a perfect, you you know black natural fro and just glisten now was this as a writer or performer performer performer right the idea was that they were gonna you know use me on update you know because norm was on the fence or something but i'm reading

this book and i'm high i'm a little high because i could not not be high for some reason you know how you do that when you smoke pot you're like you know i smoke pot pretty much every day yeah i don't want to smoke a lot today because i got this meeting. But if I smoke now, I still got three hours. To come down. Yeah, that shit. To level off. So I'm a little high. I'm reading Bruce Wagner's I'm Losing You or something.

And it's all dark and weird and about Hollywood. And now I can't tell the difference between the book and what's happening with me a little bit. And I waited like three hours. And I go in to see Warren. And he's sitting behind his desk. And Higgins is there, the head writer. And there's a picture on his desk, you know, pictures. And then like on my side of his desk is a bowl of candies.

And he sits me down and he goes, literally, like one of the first things, it was when we were doing, I think, Luna, at the beginning of Luna. And there had been press on it in the New York Times. And Lauren says, you know, I don't know what you think you're doing down there below 14th Street, luna at the beginning of luna and there had been press on it in the new york times and lauren says you know i don't know what you think you're doing down there below 14th street but it really doesn't matter and i'm like hey okay how you doing you know and and then all of a sudden lauren just you know stops talking and starts looking at me right in the eyes and i'm looking at him and higgins is actually like what the fuck's going on he goes you can tell a lot by a person's

eyes by looking into the you know so it was really fucking weird you know and i start talking about the original snl like i was a big fan he goes well there's been plenty of good casts you know that was not the best one i'm like wow this is not going well and i keep looking at this candy you know and i'm just sitting there and i'm a little high and this is weird as fuck and then he and then he like he sits back you and he does this sort of pondering thing. He's like, you know, comedians are like monkeys. You know, when people go to the zoo, they look like the lion because it's scary and the bear is intense. But the monkey makes people laugh.

So I said, you know, as long as they're not throwing shit at you. And he just, like, looks over, looks over. He doesn't do anything. And then I reached for a candy. For a Jolly Roger candy. It was Jolly Roger. And I reach the candy. I take it up. I unwrap it.

And right when the wrapper starts unwrapping, Lauren shoots a look at the writer, at Higgins. It had been decided. That candy was somehow connected to my moment and you felt that was real like you kind of because i believe that i was a little high but like i somehow failed the test like it was all hinging on the jolly roger candy yeah and i left there just completely mind fucked and you know they left me dangling for weeks but i in retrospect from what i understand i was just being used to to to scare norm oh really yeah

but i believe i like to believe that if you didn't take the candy you would be on snl today that's a better story now that story has remained very consistent in my mind over the years with the exception of the fact that i meant to say jolly ranchers and not jolly rogers what is jolly roger jolly ranchers that was what i was trying to say and the fact is i i guess i've always wondered what it would mean if i got some answers about that story now obviously there's a little paranoia working maybe i don't know it's been very easy all these years to give warren michaels this sort of buddha slash sorcerer slash mythological power because all i've had to do is think about it my life could have gone in a completely different direction had it gone the

other way so there there was a different periods of obsessing about it and wondering about it and reading the mystical implications the things that transcended coincidence into almost magic and now the thing is now that i have these answers do i want to share them because as i said this this is uh this is an arc man in my life on this show you know what happens after that what happens after i share them okay well we'll see what happens folks okay we'll see what happens okay so now annie baker i'll tell you man her plays blew me away i saw both of them uh i was turned on to her uh by uh scott rudin who sent the show an email and it's my understanding if i understand hollywood history if scott rudin sends you an email or

perhaps would like you to do something it might behoove you to look into what he's asking you to do. And I was blown away. He was right. Annie Baker is a phenomenal talent. And I saw both plays that I could, The Flick and John, when I was in New York with Brendan McDonald. And I loved both of them. And so it was a really exciting thing for me to talk to a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright

who is not what I expected. It's interesting because plays can be very cryptic and very abstract. And her plays are no different than that, where you sort of wonder, like, why decide to do it this way? Or where did that come from? How do you know when something like this is done? So it was very exciting for me to talk to a playwright. And it was even more exciting that to talk to a playwright. And it was even more

exciting that that playwright was Annie Baker. So this is me talking to Annie Baker in New York. You can get anything you need with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats, but meatballs and mozzarella balls. Yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats. Get almost, almost anything. Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. Calgary is an opportunity-rich city, home to innovators, dreamers, disruptors, and problem solvers. The city's visionaries are turning heads around the globe across all sectors each and every day. They embody Calgary's DNA. A city that's innovative, inclusive, and creative. And they're helping put Calgary and

our innovation ecosystem on the map as a place where people come to solve some of the world's greatest challenges. Calgary's on the right path forward. Take a closer look at Calgary economic development.com. City. I went to the shows Scott Rudin reached out to me personally which is scary

I don't know what's your experience with him but for me I don't know him yeah and I got an email from Scott Rudin saying yeah it's sort of titillating and scary to see his name in your inbox sure like what I do is this the end yeah wait I there's nothing he can't hurt me or maybe it's my big break right yeah you're like maybe he's gonna cast me in a movie no I think I'm that

I think that boat sailed for me but um but he was in sort of excited for me and you to talk and then he sent me a bunch of your plays with a little card i think it said um compliments of scott rudin like a card yeah i got i've gotten one of those yeah it's really exciting it kind of is yeah but if it weren't for scott rudin yeah no i need wow okay how did he find you what's your relationship with him because like because of him i saw your plays and I'm aware of you. I don't live in New York. I'm not a huge theater head, so I wouldn't have known.

Right. So how'd you meet Scott Rudin? I'm trying to remember how I'm... I think he is sort of like an all-seeing eye. And I think my second or third play in New York, which was actually a tiny play with like um 75 seat audience and like the West Village and like a church um it was at this place called the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater and it ran for like four weeks and like could barely people

fit people into the theater but he like somehow saw you know he saw it because he's Scott Rudin right and then called me in for a meeting and then I've sort of known him ever since. So you went in for the meeting. Yeah. And was it scary? Were you like intimidated? Were you like whatever? No, no, I I'm actually like I'm not when I'm not being recorded. I'm weirdly not that nervous or intimidated by people.

There is something I'm like more. intimidated by people there is something i'm like more it's like i'm i'm way more scared of like being permanently recorded as has an idiot but like just be like being witnessed as an idiot for one afternoon by scott rudin right wasn't so bad yeah he was like would you ever let me make a movie a movie that was the first pitch of that play which one would you ever be this was my play the aliens and i said no and then he was like okay and we sort of eyed each other and then we've had a relationship ever since but i actually he's so smart he's like the smartest yeah he's done some great stuff the smartest producer out there i think what was the aliens about the aliens was about um kind of the town i grew up in and all the um weird bearded

guys who would sort of like hang out near the trash cans where i grew up and and um it's like the townies for lack of a better word amherst massachusetts oh yeah so it's like it's like a college town yeah in western massachusetts and it's like a lot of there it's like it's a weird mix of people and there are a lot of like guys in sweatpants with guitars the ones that are sort of like pseudo homeless but collegey somehow but a little college homeless yeah collegey homeless who like came to this town because it was like a fun place to be right um and there was there's like huge there's like a big heroin problem in vermont and western massachusetts right now and i was interested in writing about that jay mascus is from there you guys buddies

oh no right he's from northampton but he like i was his dad was a dentist his dad was a dentist in northampton but i that was he was just like the cool awesome story when i was a dentist in Northampton, but he was just like the cool, awesome story when I was a teenager. I was like, maybe you could become Jay Mask. Like there's like a few people from that area. So you were not a mainstream person. You were already from the get-go. Yeah, I was like artier than I am now. I was like all the way. I was lonely and sad and I didn't have anything to do.

Small town. Yeah, so I was like crazy ar and I didn't have anything to do. Small town. Yeah. So I was crazy arty and angry. And I thought I was smarter than everybody else. Because you were surrounded by college kids too. So you could be that person, right? Yeah, a little. And I just like, I don't know.

There's really nothing to do but get mad and drive around with your friends at night. And then there's like cool guys who seem really cool because they're in their 30s and you're like 17 and i started hanging out with them and they have drug problems and they write their own music and so when you were 17 you were hanging out with the guys at the trash can yeah because they were like they were the real thing yeah well when i was i was kind of like a pretty good kid, like nerdy with glasses. And then when I was 16, I dated a cute townie guy and he introduced me to the whole world

of people who have drumming circles next to the pond in the middle of the night and stuff. The post-hippie do-nothings. Yeah, and everyone's shrooming. And I got into that crowd and it was dreads and smells yeah dreads and smells and and but it's like it was kind of an amazing group of people and i got really close to them and then years later you'd hear that people had died and it's yeah it's just a it's a really specific world that i hadn't seen portrayed before what you have siblings or

i do i grew up with an older brother that's important yeah how much older three and a half years which is like yeah which is enough for him to like introduce me to cool music right also hate me right yeah right well that tension is necessary he hated me and he thought i was dumb but i was like a good pupil right so so in those moments where you actually connected it was around like him showing you cool stuff him showing me cool stuff and cool music and i remember when we were younger um his he and his friends would be playing video games and i was like in love with that i was like in love with all of his like nerdy nerdy friends just because they were nerdy too yeah we were both

oh you're like that's super nerdy but his group a friend said that I could come hang out with them if they could use me as a footstool. So I would like, I remember as a kid, like just like lying, like crouching in a little ball on my, on the floor of my brother's bedroom and them like resting their feet on me. And I was like, this is great. How old were you? I get to hang out with these guys, you know, probably like eight and they were 11. Borderline abusive. I was telling that like, it was like a cute story and then your face like fell and you looked troubled. If you were 12, it would have been a problem.

Yeah. 11 and 7, 8. It's cute. Yeah. What's your folks doing now, Hurst? My mom growing up was a therapist. Oh, really? Yeah.

What kind? therapist oh really yeah what kind um well she worked at a clinic in Northampton for um mostly um children who are abuse survivors um and then she was also like going back to school while she was doing that job and trying to get her PhD in psychology and I remember once like the husband she was like testifying in court for one of the abused kids and like the husband uh showed up in our backyard like threatening us like there was some she was like part of that world right um and then so my brother and i lived with her and then my dad lived in new york city actually here yeah still no he lives in DC when they get divorced six you were six yeah are your parents still together no they're still alive not together every episode I've listened to

of your show everyone's parents are divorced I'm keeping it might just be a coincidence which ones I really I'm like are we all from divorced parents? Some peoples are still alive. But yeah, I think most people in general in a certain world, the parents are divorced. Yeah. It seems pretty common. What effect it has on these all change. My parents didn't get divorced till I was in my 30s. So it's really, yeah, it's hard for me to figure out. Do you feel like they should have gotten divorced earlier?

I don't know. You know, like probably. I mean, there was so much weird self-involved lying going on. Like I didn't know until later. But I don't know that I really felt that connected to them in general. So when you were 15, if someone was like, are your parents happy together? You would have been like, I don't know. Yeah, because I just never really saw them as parents they were just these people that i grew up with that they seem to have some problems and they needed a lot of attention right yeah right well what's your relationship like with

your parents um my mom and i are really close i feel still through in therapy yeah and she's um she started teaching psychology after she got her doctorate up in new hampshire and she just she like just retired two months ago she and i are really close we were like too close when i was a kid sure like now i feel like it's really good we're like friends she was leaning on you when you were a kid well i actually just think it's that thing when you're a single parent especially after my brother went to college it's just like a 15 year old girl and a 50 year old woman like living together and you're both single you know i mean it's like it's just really intense like we were just like a couple right and we i mean i um like i don't know who i'd be without like staying, sitting at the kitchen table with her like really late at night and like talking about everything.

But so that's like a huge part of my life and I wouldn't ever take that away. But I am like, that's great. Like my friends would hear the kind of conversations I had with my mother and just be like, what? But that's good. Mostly good. You know, occasionally you don't want to hear about everything and i think as a kid i always asked a lot of questions and i was very curious but i always i was the kind of kid that like asked the question that you you i didn't actually want to know the answer to like you like about you like sex and you like you don't you want your mom to

talk about sex like to a certain point and And then you like she laid it out. She laid it out big time. And but not just the biology. No. Like, yeah. Yeah. Too much information. Too much information.

And looking back, you're like, huh? But yeah, she's cool. So it's a boundary. She's a cool lady. Yeah. The two of us had some boundary issues. Like, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And I like hated all our boyfriends. And, and you know it was like we were into i was like a jealous husband uh-huh oh really yeah yeah what's your dad do he's he's done a lot of different things sort of he's an environmentalist that's sort of what all his jobs have been related to yeah i don't know i meet people who like, whose parents told them that they were going to be like, that they were going to be great artists when they grew up or that they could, you know, the whole,

like you can do anything, which, you know, I'll probably tell my kids, but there is a weird entitlement, I think, to people who think they, who knew they were going to do great things or,

I don't know. I just, I never had that. I was sure I was like, I'm just trying to like avoid being homeless in the gutter. And I, so that makes me very happy that I like, I'm always very grateful that I get to be an artist because it is,

it's a legitimately a pleasant surprise. Like I did not think it would happen. Did you have jobs? I had so many jobs and I was just sure that that's what i'd be doing for the rest of my i was totally resigned to that and i was really good at finding jobs i was doing jobs yeah i was like i'm gonna have a series of jobs and i'll try to find it by the you know i'll try to have a job that doesn't make me want to kill myself and i'll have that job and then i'll die and that was it what i And that was it. That's what I get. That was the dream. That's what I get.

That's what you get. Yeah. But really, and that's what most people get, you know? And so I am really lucky, but I had tons of jobs and I was really good. It's weird.

Cause I'm really lazy and ineffective in lots of areas of my life, but I was, I've always been really good at finding jobs. So I was like, I'm working in the bakery after school when I was in high school. I was like the youngest person there by like 15 years. Making bread and muffins?

I just like sold cookies at the counter. Oh, you didn't get to bake? I didn't get to bake anything. But were the bakers there? The bakers were there. How great is that to work in a place where they bake? It was great. And then if a cookie breaks, you get to eat it.

And then I'd just like be breaking cookies when they weren't looking. Sure. And I was just like be breaking cookies when they weren't looking. Sure. And I was just like babysitting all the time. You know, I just was like always working and always like saving money. And then I worked throughout college and had like a million different jobs. I was writing, but I wasn't showing it to anybody. What were you writing?

I was writing short stories. I wrote a play, and I like submitted it to some student play contest in the high school. Yeah, like a short stories. I wrote a play, but, and I like submitted it to some con, you know, some student play con in the high school. Yeah. Like a short play. And then I, um,

what's the opposite of submitting? I rescinded it like the night before I was like, actually nevermind. And I, and then I like took it back cause it was so bad. And you know, I was really self hating and hated everything I wrote and sort of did it in secret.

Why do you think you were self-hating? I don't know. I do think it's partly like having an older brother and a father who were like really into like movies and books and like talking about all that stuff. I do think that I do think that I owe, and I, I don't know.

I always felt like anything I produced wasn't as good as I knew something. I didn't, I always held myself. It's like I, at 15, I still, I held myself to the standard I hold myself to now, which is like,

I want to make something really good. And that it's so painful when you're 15 and you're like, and I'm a, yeah. And I'm a stupid 15 year old, so I can't do it. But I like knew I never had the thing where I was like, maybe it's really good.

I always knew I was like an idiot high school student and it's so painful. Right. And so then all the high school students who were like doing stuff and thinking it was good, I like couldn't identify with them. I mean, I still feel that way. Actually. I'm still like, I haven't like, this is terrible what I good. I like couldn't identify with them. I mean, I still feel that way actually. I'm still like, I haven't like,

this is terrible what I'm doing. Like what's wrong with you idiots that you think this is like, yeah, I'm not just being self-deprecating. I am like, but, and there's a kind of like actually like. You know, you won the Pulitzer Prize. I did, but I had the same feeling where I was like this, I could do so much better than this.

I mean, it's actually very egotistical. Like if you, it's actually kind of like, I could be so much better. Right. Did you rescind the Pulitzer? Like, look, this is a mistake. Yeah, I like sent the play where I'm like, I think you guys, you guys, you're wrong. It's really not that good. I want to take the play.

I don't know who submitted this. I would have if I could have. Seriously. Yeah, seriously. But there's probably a broader series of pressures and reasons than just being a 15-year-old. Yeah. No, clearly it's still going on for me now. But now sort of like the expectations or what you would see as expectations once you win something like that

which is a pretty big fucking deal yeah you're sort of like oh my god no now what yeah although i feel like my own expectations for myself have always been so high because the people have asked me they've been like do you feel pressure now that you won this award to like you know the next thing you do has to be really good and I actually feel like the amount of pressure I've exerted on myself is so high my whole life that it's like it actually doesn't I don't feel like yeah I'm already like crippled under the weight of the pressure I put on myself because it's interesting about self-hatred at you's funny. Keep going. Yeah. No, it is because, you know, some people have it and it's it's it's a really hard thing to shake that type of judgment on yourself. And some people don't have it. I don't I don't meet a

lot of people that are necessarily really confident, but they don't do the thing where they second guess everything. And even when they have success, they're like, no, it's okay. You know, that thing. That there's no moment of relief or sense of accomplishment that would give you the self-esteem even for a minute. That was sort of like. Well, it's so the self because I don't know. Like, I don't hate if I think about it. Like don't hate myself right like i like myself okay like i actually think i'm like a pretty good friend and like a pretty good girlfriend like i'm not great you

know i'm like okay but i'm like i don't beat myself up about it right well actually that's not true but i don't it's different i'm like i I'm like, I would want to be friends with me. Like, I'm a nice lady. But then when it comes to like making art, it's like, that's a whole, that's a whole different story. And that is about like, what's the point? It just feels like such an indulgent thing to be able to do. thing to be able to do and so many people on this planet like don't get to do that and don't have the opportunity to express themselves creatively for their job i mean it's so crazy that we get to do that so then i do feel this like enormous pressure and enormous amount of i don't know

if it's self-hatred but just like maybe it's self-hatred but just like i better fucking make this really amazing and then when it's not really amazing i feel like shit but um maybe i don't know if that's self-hatred would you would you do you hate yourself um i i do i do it in a very specific way like you know generally i think i'm okay with myself but i do have like weird body issues for a dude and i do um wait what are your weird body issues i just always feel like i'm like doughy you're not you don't look doughy see now it's gone for a second see what you did thank you this interview has been great for me but have you always felt that way though you've like since you were a kid you were like i'm doughy disorder so like it was yeah yeah that was her way that she bonded with me her lack of boundaries was concerned for me being fat oh and were you

ever fat chubby but like every kid's chubby right yeah she fucked me up for good yeah but it's deep yeah yeah but like in terms of professionally i never think i put the right amount of time into my bits i don't think uh that my comedy is as strong as it could be. I'll compare myself to other people. Yeah. Like my friends who are either more successful or who I think are more funny or have a structure. My process is my process. Anyone's process is whatever.

Right. But I always think if I was a little more disciplined and I didn't write like that, then I'd be much better. But does it stop me? No. Yeah. I definitely feel like I don't work hard enough.

Right. You perpetuate it. It's our way of motivating. Yeah. But when your parents got divorced, was that, did you, are you friends with your dad?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I didn't really, he didn't, I grew up with my mom more right um but yeah we're friendly it's cool but you didn't feel like you know it was your fault and all that shit it wasn't my fault no you know i was young enough that i don't remember i

definitely was like depressed and sad about it i think but i think worse than actually your parents getting divorced for me i shouldn't speak for other people for me worse than actually your parents getting divorced, for me, I shouldn't speak for other people, for me, worse than the divorce itself, because my parents, like, shouldn't have been together. It was, like, very clear. It was one of those divorces where afterwards you were like, I have no idea why those two people would have ever gotten together. They're so different. Like, even just the two of them talking in the room at, like, a high school graduation seems surreal. in the room at like a high school graduation seems surreal. But I think harder for me was like the whole like parents dating other people thing and like people coming in and out of my lives and like my parents marrying people.

And then they were just like single people in the 80s. Right. So a lot of people coming through. Yeah. There were a lot of people coming through on both sides. And that was the hard part. That's the thing where i look back and i'm like oh that sucked like having to meet people and um get to know them and like being asked to consider them your family and then them like disappearing when your parent breaks up with them like that whole thing fucked with my head and i think if i ever have kids that's the thing i would really want to

try not to do if i ever like got divorced would be like the whole the whole like bringing introducing your kid to people you're dating madness thing but hard to avoid too it's interesting and i'm sure you've made the connection that you know trying to figure out what a relationship is and whether they're possible and and and whether you can have one that'll stay and is some theme you work with in my work yeah yeah is it yeah i guess you know that the play you saw last night john was like the first play where i'd In my work? Yeah. Yeah. Is it? Yeah, I guess. You know, the play you saw last night, John, was like the first play where I'd ever really tried

to like tackle a romantic relationship. I think I've always really avoided that. And that was my first play where I was like, I want to write about like the mind fuck of being in a relationship like in its last stage. But last stage at three years. Last stage at three, yeah. Like a young relationship of young people.

Young people when you shouldn't be together, but you're like working really hard and you don't know yourself well enough to know that you should just leave. And that whole thing. And then you think there's something wrong with you and that whole cycle. I was interested in writing about that but i that's like another thing i really hesitated writing about it because i do think like so many plays and movies about relationships

there is a point where i'm like why do i care it's just like like but also there has to feel a little universal and not just about like right two people in love and breaking up well i didn't i didn't feel that that was the primary story but the idea of of what is permanent and what is um you know unconditional and what is you know bigger than us yeah and what stays throughout well that's the hardest thing for me about becoming an adult was this whole idea. Like, I think I would have fared. That's not true. I'm going to say something that's not true.

But I think I would have fared better in like one of those societies where you like married your first girlfriend or boyfriend. And then you're just like stuck with them and you're not allowed to get divorced. I don't actually wish that's what had happened but but i the the whole thing where like you could fall in love with people and even live with them and like have thanksgiving with them and then break up which is kind of what being in your 20s is about now killed me like i couldn't believe that because i'd grown up with that and i didn't want to do that yeah and pain just ludicrous to me, like, like bringing someone in that close to you and,

and like trying to make someone family and then it failing and then you never see each other again. And I would try to be friends with all my ex-boyfriends because I was like, how can we not be in each other's lives anymore? You know, I was like, it was very, very hard for me to accept the idea that like people leave your life sometimes it's horrible and that you can initiate like that i would initiate that that i'd be the person who

would end something also killed me like i couldn't like i could that was um i'd feel like that was like my most self-hating moment was like in my mid-20s when i was, I'm hurting people and ending things. And, and, um, that really killed me. And I do feel like that's related to like being a child of divorce. Yeah. I just didn't want to do that myself. And then of course I did. And it must, how can you not? No, it's, it's impossible not to. Yeah. And, and still honor your feelings if you just, unless you just luck out. But I think it's interesting that the idea idea of it's not the society you talk about where you're supposed to be with the person that you you i mean that the idea of marriage is sort of that yeah but there was no reason that you would ever believe in it given what you grew up with yeah it didn't seem rational yeah i wanted it very badly though

like i loved the idea of like meeting someone in eight at 18 and being with them for the rest of your life. I was like, that sounds great. That sounds so stable, but you'd have to turn a lot of your brain off. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And, and suck up a lot of things where, you know, in the culture we live in as, as, you know, um,

ideas about individuality and psychology evolve, we've grown to try to service ourselves more than others in relationship and protect that. I don't know. No, that's the hardest thing. It is the hardest thing. And it's all about compromise. I'm older than you, and I've been through a couple marriages and some painful shit. You know, having like, I'm older than you and I've, you know, been through a couple of marriages and some painful shit,

but, and I don't, I don't like it. And it's really kind of awful. It's like, but I'm just realizing now as you talk about it, that if I look at the two plays, I saw this,

this idea of, of grieving, you know, absence of somebody for whatever reason, and the loneliness of longing. And then also the sort of the weird, painful loneliness of, of losing or deciding to, to not be with somebody you, you loved is like, that's a human thing. It's everybody has that. They're just walking around with at some state of heartbreak yeah managing heartbreak yeah and i never wanted to betray anybody that was always my thing

like as a teenager and someone in my early 20s i was always like i don't i'm never gonna betray anybody but like of course we just go through life betraying everybody all the time and ourselves and it's just a matter of like managing it and talking about it and like. Rationalizing. Rationalizing it and trying to minimize it. But I just never wanted to make anyone feel bad or betrayed ever. Yeah. And then I, of course, the sad thing too is when you also like have that goal, then you

end up betraying people left and like, then you're just like not in touch with your desires and then you screw lots of people over. Right. Well, that's the trap. And then, and then, yeah. And then you're just like not in touch with your desires and then you screw lots of people over right well that's the trap and then and then yeah and then you're hard on yourself yeah you get to honor that like i'm not good yeah yeah yeah well i figured it all out yeah so when did you decide to um pursue theater for real i what, why did you go to college? Like you were working and doing your jobs and breaking cookies and you know, you didn't have a big plan for yourself. Did your parents say like, you should go to college or were you sure? Oh, I totally wanted to go to college. Like I loved reading and I loved art and I wanted to get out of my small town and I wanted to move to New York city. Um, so I So I was super excited about going to college.

But you wanted to move to New York City because of college or just because there was something here that you had decided you wanted? There was something here that I decided I wanted. What was that based on? I don't, my dad living here, like I visited him here. I liked it. I like going to like see movies at Film Forum. I wanted to like work in the theater somehow.

So you did. So right when I moved here, yeah. Right when I moved here while I was, my freshman year of college, I was like a stage manager at La Mama, which is actually like two blocks away from here. And I just immediately started. So you knew theater was it?

I was super into theater. And I was like, I want to be involved in this somehow. And were you acting? You were acting in high school. In high school, I was acting, but I never wanted to be an actor because i'm a bad actor what were you doing what kind of acting what plays well i was the star of my high school musical my senior year of high school guys and dolls you did guys and dolls i did guys and dolls and i was adelaide and that

was still the high point of my life to this day to this day was because i got to like wear tiny sparkly hot pants and like fishnet stockings i remember like the woman who was supposed to choreograph my dances like got sick or something like the gym teacher or whatever yeah and so i like choreographed all my own dances and like got to wear a blonde wig and it's bigger than the Pulitzer. Yeah. No question. I was happier than really. Well,

that, that one experience was really, really great. It was great. It was totally great. And I remember when it was happening, I was like, it's not,

I'm never going to get to like star in a musical and like wear tiny, sparkly hot pants ever again. This is it. And it was, yeah. You know, there's still, there's still time, Annie. Yeah. No. Yeah. You know, there's still time, Annie.

Yeah. No. Well, I'm saying it on your podcast in case someone's doing a production of Guys and Dolls somewhere and wants to cast me. I'm available. I'd watch the email box. Okay. You're going to get some weird, were you serious about the Guys and Dolls? And I'll say yes.

But I can't do it for scheduling reasons. I'll clear my schedule all right so you come here and you you went to where I went to NYU yeah and I studied I studied a lot of stuff I studied playwriting though I studied undergrad undergrad I studied religion what school you're in Tish yeah I studied playwriting at tish but you're working at la mama as a stage hand is that stage manager just that was like one of my many jobs i also all my jobs were very close to here actually um i was a worked at st mark's bookshop oh yeah when else it's gone i know but the la mama thing i mean what was your experience in taking theater in up to the point of you coming here

there wasn't a lot which is one of the it's still like very mysterious to me how I ended up being interested in theater and doing theater and then the fact that I'm a playwright now I don't totally understand I mean there's like high school theater and I had a great high school drama teacher yeah who showed me lots of good plays yeah um but i don't i don't know why i liked it so much and i don't know why i was so drawn to it um i don't i still don't totally understand it to go back to the beginning of our conversation yeah i it's um it's always just been like a mysterious thing and i've always been very drawn to it. And there wasn't like a moment when I was like, I love theater.

I want to work in theater. And so much about theater drives me insane. Like it's sometimes it's kind of a nightmare. And I feel like when you do theater, you're not really part of the larger cultural conversation. It's like it's like a weird business. And so I still like like I woke up this morning and i was like why do i do like i just was like i like got the email that the computers went out last night and there were no sound cues for half the show and i was just like why did i do this yeah like what like why

did i choose to work in like the most flawed eeral, out of your control medium? Well, it's not always out of your control. I mean, it's actually more than most contextually very in your control. Kind of, but something always goes wrong. Like it really, it's sort of like you can't, it's sort of impossible to have the perfect show. Right, because you have actors, you have other elements. There's so many things that

can go wrong and even if someone sees a really good show like the next night someone sees the show where there's no doorbell ring and and and um i mean that's like really beautiful like there's something really beautiful about that human yeah and like you i'm a huge perfectionist and you can't ever hit perfection in the theater. It's a crazy goal. And you can find the perfect cast, but someone always drops out two weeks before rehearsals start. And also somebody could space out. There could be weird moments where it's sort of like- Yeah, people forget their lines every show.

That's just the way it goes. Are they going to get back on track? Yeah. It's just what happens. Well, that's sort of exciting. Yeah. But it's like this crazy emotional roller coaster. And watching my own plays i am like this is a nightmare and like the greatest adrenaline rush ever like there's something really it's like both at the same time that sounds great

yeah i mean kind of it like it it is you're like living when you watch your own play and someone forgets their line but then like remembers it five seconds later like you are like living when you watch your own play and someone forgets their line, but then like remembers it five seconds later. Like you are like the highs and lows are very extreme. Yeah. It's like reading a comment section. It's just like reading a comment section. Nice one.

I did that this morning. I read the comment section for some review in the New York times, but wait, we got to go back here because something must have happened. Let's try to identify. That made me into theater. No, but La Mama is very specific. I have to assume a 19-year-old

in that... I didn't know what it was. There was a sign on it. There was a sign on the wall. But once you're in it, it's one of the great bastions of experimental theater. Yeah. I was really impressed that you said it and and so i think i wouldn't i don't know but it sounds really good i think it could be used there yeah i'll look at it later yeah

but but i have to assume that coming out of what you came from even you know being relatively hip kid that something must have happened there like because i know i don't go to a lot of theater because i can't bear bad theater and i don't i don't seek it out i don't seek theater out yeah unless somebody tells me i gotta see it there are plays i've seen in my life that have changed my life like what well i think that like the thing that really blew me away about theater was just how like strangely human it was, but just once removed like that,

that you would have somebody right there, you know, talking at this pitch, you know, see spit and it's its own universe, but like I could touch him. Yeah. You know,

and that, that connection, I saw a weird amateur production in Albuquerque, New Mexico of Sam Shepard's Tooth of Crime, I think. Oh, yeah. And that's an epic fucking play. Yeah. Sort of about the music business. And there were people I knew in it because I was a kid that I got a job across from the university when I was 15.

So I was very entrenched with art and older people and doing art and being an artist and all that stuff. So this guy I used to work with at the restaurant, Judd, he directed and put up this Tooth of Crime at this kind of weird theater space. And the dude who played Crow was this painter in town. So it was this vortex of all the local arty people that I kind of knew. And I don't know that I could wrap my mind around the play, really.

But I was just sort of amazed at the commitment of it all. And of the spectacle of it all. And of the language of it all. And it's so vulnerable, too. I feel like being in a play or putting on a play is like the most humiliating, vulnerable thing to do. Musicals, the worst. Yeah, that is. But there is something like that's also then really when it works and you're in the audience and these people are being so vulnerable.

Right. It's like really you can get like a high off of it. Well, not just a high, but it's like it's vulnerability and in a space where it's permitted and allowed to be connected with by an audience or others is sort of an elevation of the human spirit. It's sort of why we're here in some weird way. It's a part of being human

that gets very distant from a lot of people. Yeah. And it's an interaction. Like even though the actors on stage are pretending you aren't there, like, you know, they know that you're there. Like you're all, everyone's like aware and it is some kind of weird, just like human interaction. one of the things that keeps bringing me back to it because i do find that like most human interactions kind of suck and and like don't have a lot of meaning in them and there's a lot of depressing small talk and like a play is an opportunity to like be in a room with a lot of people and talk about important things or like things that matter to people but that's but that's

get really vulnerable with each other right but but that that's that's interesting that you say that and because of like the the type of conversation that that that is the flick was was mundane conversation on the surface in a way yeah that's true for part of that play yeah they are just like shooting the shit yeah and that and this whole idea about the requirement of an audience in theater and in that relationship the fact that you created this this set that was unchanging and it was a movie theater where the seats actually reflected the seats of the theater. Yeah. That, you know, that sort of demands attention.

I don't know, you know, how conscious the playwright is of what that might mean. That was like the first thing that came to me when I started writing the play. Like that was my idea. That it was going to be set in a movie theater. With like the fourth wall being the movie screen and a face-off of audience seats. Like a full audience facing an empty audience on stage in theater versus film, kind of, in the physical space. Which sort of provokes the question as an audience member. I guess the most innocent one is, are we the movie?

Yeah. And what are our lives? What is it saying about us? Who are these people having this small talk on stage? You know, just sort of like co-workers at an old movie theater just trying to feel each other out

and position themselves in this small world. Yeah. Yeah. What was your intention of it was my i mean i'm so bad at talking about no i don't and i don't think you should have um but what i mean i did it was actually just an experience i would have um going to the movies it's like i would go see a really crappy movie right and then it would be over and I'd stay till the end of the credits.

Cause I just kind of liked that. It just kind of, we, it gets weird and quiet and awkward and like the weird flashes of light that happened at the end of the credits and the special thanks and the, um, and then I loved the moment when the lights came on and the ushers came through and started like shit talking each

other and sweeping up the popcorn like that transition from like the magic like time machine of the movies into the like crazy present tense like fluorescence fluorescent lights on like some guy in a polo shirt like sweeping up popcorn that to me felt like so profound and i still couldn't really tell you like i couldn't be like well it's profound because right you know like but to me that moment and that transition um like i wanted it to be both a tribute to the movies like the power of watching a movie and how jarring it is when a movie's over and a tribute to like theater because actually when you're sitting in those audience seats and then the ushers come through you're kind of just like watching theater like right they're kind of like performing for you a little when they sweep when they know you're still there

yeah yeah yeah um so so that whole thing was like soup felt like super potent to me and this sort of these characters which are familiar familiar to any of us in a way, either because we've had jobs like that or we've lived in towns like that, where you have a guy like Sam who is stuck. And because of that, he's become this sort of senior employee. There's a sadness to that guy. Yeah. Not unlike the guys at the trash can, I imagine. Yeah. Where they seem to have missed or sort of over-dreamed themselves into a paralysis where

they're not going to ever leave. Yeah. Or I also just feel like most jobs in this country suck. Like, I don't know i feel like we forget when we like achieve our dreams and like get to interact with other people who like achieve their dreams that like most people don't get to have the job they'd really like to have like no most people like don't get their dream job i mean i'm saying really obvious shit but i it's that thing where i still think about that all or they might not know what it is or they might not know what it is they're just surviving because they don't know how to manifest you know like you said their creativity

or because maybe their life has cornered them into a situation who knows why maybe or just like class in this country absolutely and i just like uh like the guy like that guy in the play just like didn't get to go to college and I don't know I guess I do I wanted to write about that too when you write plays

like you recognize Shepard when I said it like at some point whether you know why you got into it or not you know you had to into it or not, you know, you had to reckon with what was going to become your life. You had to deal with theater.

You had to educate yourself. Yeah. Although I was just going to say, although I'm not like, I actually, um, I'm not as well read in theater as I should be. Like I love theater.

I go see theater all the time. I love a lot of, I like love certain playwrights and really studied them but i like um i mean i was like i got really into checkoff for many years and like read everything he ever wrote what was it about checkoff that that compelled you um specifically just how messy it was. How, I mean, just going back to vulnerability, how like scared and vulnerable everyone in his plays is and how the conflict in the plays isn't like, because when you take like a playwriting class in college, they tell you that like, it's like a bad acting class.

It's like, what do you want? You know, like this character wants this thing and like this character needs to want like something different and then they like have to duke it out and I always hated that kind of writing and I feel like Chekhov plays really inspired me because they were like that person doesn't know what they want that person doesn't know what they want they think they're projecting like this onto that other person and now they're both feeling really lonely in the same room together and that was really exciting to me and like his plays always felt so much more entertaining to me than plays that had

like a really action-packed plot or something but that said like i actually i i hate reading plays i really i love seeing plays it's like my favorite thing to do but i really hate reading them and i'd much rather read a novel like any day of the week but i really hate reading them and i'd much rather read a novel like any day of the week sure so shakespeare i like well i like shakespeare because i was a high school theater nerd yeah so i kind of know a lot of shakespeare because i was like in hamlet when i was 15 and i like took a shakespeare class and got really into it so that was like i think if you're a high school theater nerd you get to know shakespeare okay but what did you glean from him in the as a person who writes plays oh god you know i've never actually thought about like what what shakespeare taught me um what did you it feels

like a part of my it's so funny it like feels like a part of me because I was so young. I was in Merchant of Venice when I was 12. I had my first kiss doing Merchant of Venice with this cute older boy. Did you feel it? Oh, I was so into it. I was a really unattractive 12-year-old. He was not into it. I think he actually asked the director to cut it. They ended up cutting the kiss from the show oh but there was one glorious rehearsal

when we got to kiss and i was super super excited hurt your feelings when they cut yeah yeah totally hurt my feeling i was like is it and then you just i'm still like just tragedy of shakespeare just telling you about it i'm like is it because i was a bad kisser or is it because you were 12 Is it because I was a bad kisser or is it because... You were 12. Or is it because they didn't want it in the play anymore? I don't know. Like, anyway. So it felt sort of ingrained to you?

Yeah, those plays just feel like part of the, like, culture in a weird way in those stories. Yeah. And the cool thing about those plays is how little you need to do them. I feel like if you go to most plays in New York, including mine, actually, you have these incredibly expensive sets that are trying to represent what a living room looks like or something.

And it's really depressing and a lot of money is spent on it. And I think doing Shakespeare in high school, and I feel like a lot of high school kids have this, it's like a way to get that all you need for theater is like a high school gymnasium and you know what I mean in like two props yeah and you can like do a really good version of Hamlet like you did and then and um each every scene like takes place in a different place and people are like running around and there is it's like super they don't make very good movies i mean with some exceptions but it's they're they're so theatrical um but i'm i'm kind of pulling that

out of my ass as i talk to you i didn't like that's not why why not just why not just consider it thinking out loud yeah and entrust it for a minute all right i'm not pressuring you yeah no it's just that thing where, I'm sure you have this all the time. You like listening. I put a lot of shit in my ass. Yeah, and you listen to yourself or read yourself in print

and you're like, I just made that up to have something to say. Right. Or you were just saying something you hadn't thought about it before. But I think that what you're, like what you said, because I have a hard time with Shakespeare

and I just, you know, I just had Ian McKellen give me a lesson in it face-to-face. Yeah. Like he did Shakespeare for me, right, looking at me. And it was sort of mind-blowing. Yeah. And I get that. I'm not going to get anything from reading it.

Those days are sort of behind me. But if it's played with feeling and focus, that the language connects on an emotional level, even if I don't understand it. Yeah, it kind of like zaps your brain, that language, in an amazing way. I also think Shakespeare should be performed in smaller spaces, which I actually think is why a group of high school students doing Shakespeare can be the best way to see it. Or sitting at a table with Ian McKellen. Because I do feel like they do Shakespeare in these huge, hoity-toity venues. There's an affectation.

Yeah, and there's a lot of pomp and circumstance around it. About honoring the Shakespearean method as well. do Shakespeare in these like huge hoity-toity venues. There's an affectation. Yeah. And there's a lot of pomp and circumstance around it. About honoring the Shakespearean method as well. Yeah. And people have like weird pseudo-British accents when they do it, even when they're American. And, you know, there's like a lot of pretension around it. And I actually do think that like doing it in a small space without a lot of...

But you took to it. I did take to it. Yeah. So, okay. So you did, you were into Chekhov when you got to it i did take to it yeah so okay so you did you were into checkoff when you got to college and you put up a checkoff play too right yeah i adapted uncle vanya a couple years ago was that a great experience for you it was a great experience and we did it actually in a tiny tiny space so no one was farther away from the actors than like you and i are from each other and it was in the round and everyone was sitting on the floor.

Um, and I, we just used all my favorite actors in New York. Who? Um, let's give them a little love. Reed, Bernie,

Mike Shannon, Georgia Engel, who was in John last night. Um, Maria Dizia. There's nine people. Matt Mayer, who was in the flick.

Yeah, he's great. Um, a lot of really great people. Um, it was just like a crew. There's nine people. Matt Mayer, who was in the flick. Yeah, he was great. A lot of really great people. So you've got a crew. I got a crew. And I got my crew to do it. And they were amazing.

And what did you want out of that? I kind of wanted exactly what I got, which was that was actually the most fun I've ever had watching my own work because it wasn't really my work. Like it was an opportunity to write and change words around and be kind of a perfectionist with a play I already knew was really good. So that whole thing we were talking about of like feeling like a failure and feeling like you didn't make the thing you want to make,

I just tried to do a really, really loyal translation of a play that I think is amazing and cast really good people in it and work with a really good director and really good designers. And it was super gratifying. Did Sam Gold direct it? Yeah, he directed it.

Where'd you meet him? He did a great job. I met him in 2006 just through mutual friends, like his girlfriend, who's now his wife, was my friend and thought we'd work well together. And the guy I was dating at the time was his friend. And, you know,

it was like that weird thing where people are like, you guys should meet and talk. And then we did. So in starting to write plays, like how many are not, are sort of just sitting on your computer still um there's like three or four just sitting in my computer big plays are they big plays one was an attempt to write like uh that my worst nightmare of a play which was a like two-person play about a romance um with a lot of nudity because i always feel like people

really exploit stage actors and make them take off their clothes all the time and i'm friends with a lot of actors and it's just a really intense thing to ask someone to do so i wrote this play that was like an almost nude two-hander play so i'll never show that to anybody that was like a personal challenge they have some play i wrote that was kind of an attempt to write about me and my mother that didn't work out. Why? Those are the two that come to mind. I wrote it, I haven't looked at it in years.

It just like, just didn't find itself. It like didn't find a higher meaning. There wasn't like, I didn't, I never cracked the like thing above the family drama. And I think at some point I got nervous and tried to add a lot of like plot and action. I remember someone like running out of the room and getting a gun. You know, it was really bad. Well, do you think that some of that like when you say you crack the wall or the ceiling of the drama, that's just something you feel? Yeah, that's like an intuitive thing.

What's that? That's the gift right there. Well, that's the thing you're moving towards is that you could write about something very small, like someone sweeping up popcorn or like a couple in a bed and breakfast and that somehow if you do it the right way, it like achieves some larger spiritual meaning

that you actually can't articulate or else it wouldn't have that resonant and you can't really explain it and you can't really explain it and that's what makes it work and then sometimes you just write a play and you're like oh this is no larger spiritual meaning it's really just about these people saying the things they're saying and it's like not profound and i don't know why and usually it comes from me trying to be like it's that if you try too hard to be profound or if i have like too big or if i'm too sure of what i'm doing i feel like that can actually like cripple the thing and make it then mean nothing so you have to like hope that the parts transcendent thing happens like i imagine the thing about you

and your mother is probably too personal for for you to find that thing maybe i have i really admire people who can like write straight autobiographical stuff from there i mean i'm sort of glad i can't do it because i feel like my family would be really mad at me yeah but i've done it they'll be mad at you but i've actually been lucky enough that like my plays really aren't based on specific people or things that have happened to me um and i actually i that's that's not really because i'm trying to protect anyone it's actually just because i need a kind of distance from it. Like, I don't think I could ever write a character based on either of my parents entirely. You'd be too self-censoring?

Yeah, or even if I did just like, I'd be too angry or it'd be the opposite. I'd either like be too easy on them or be too hard on them. I mean, I think that's how we feel about our parents. We like excuse weird behavior and then are weirdly hard on them for other behavior and i feel like to write a character i need to feel just 100 empathetic towards them but also have like a kind of cold critical distance and i just like don't know how i could

ever write a play about either of my parents that had that kind of appropriate objective distance and and then you don't have the freedom to build a relationship that's completely new with the character you're getting to know. Yeah, and I feel like I'd have some weird agenda writing a play about someone I know. Like I'd be trying to prove some point. Yeah, and you don't feel like you have an agenda.

I definitely do not have an agenda. I mean, if I have an agenda, it's like I don't want to make plays like all the crappy plays that people who have seen I mean it's so crazy I meet so many people who are like yeah I don't really like theater and I guess my agenda is to make

plays that those people might like that was a conversation we had I feel like I should at some point but I don't want to lose this thread you know talk about the basic plots of the two plays because you know most people don't see plays and most people don't see plays or they see plays but like in their town they see like their town production of two they go to a big break or go to a big broadway or then they go see wicked yeah

the flick it takes place in a theater, you know, all in, mostly during lights up when these ushers and the projectionists in that job kind of alters a bit, you know, are cleaning up. And the characters are Rose, Avery, and Sam. And I think I saw it right, the original cast, right? Yeah, yeah, those three. Yeah, they're still doing it for a couple more weeks.

Now, in building these characters, where did you know? Because there's something I did read in one of the earlier plays that I didn't get to finish. But in the beginning of the play, you sort of created a glossary of absence. Oh, yeah. you sort of created a glossary of absence. Oh, yeah.

That there was a glossary of what the different silences were required that you ask them, whoever was producing the show, to utilize this key of pause, silence, and there was a few. There was like four. Yeah, I don't do that anymore because so many people told me

that I seemed like such an asshole like so many people were like we've bought your book of plays and you have this thing at the beginning where you tell people exactly how long to pause and it seems really but but it is and i also feel like people know my work well enough now that they sort of know not to speed through it. But sorry, I interrupted you. Where were you going? But to me, that's sort of a type of awareness that you obviously see those periods of silence as being as important, if not more important,

than the actual dialogue. Yes, definitely. Definitely. Why? Well, I feel like the reason the reason well it sort of goes back to the reason i hate reading plays is because i feel like 80 of theater is like the way it looks the physical objects on stage and like the bodies moving through space like the way someone crosses their legs or gets up and walks across the room and that's like so much of the play to me and I'm so much more into I think I am really interested

in movement and silence like movement happening during silence um and yeah to me that's just as important as the dialogue and the play so so there are certain directors out there this is like a big thing in British theater where they like cross out the stage directions they like don't look at them it's just the dialogue um and that to me is crazy because I'm trying to orchestrate like a whole event where like the way you push up your glasses is as important as the thing you say and I feel like that's true in real life and whether we know it or not whether we know it or not and so I try to be super specific about that in my stage directions and in the play well i think it's it's really effective because what's interesting is i know that there was some

controversy here in new york about uh people not liking the flick and you know previous to it winning any sort of awards yeah where it was put up originally uh there was some backlash from theater goers and i was just in a room full of a lot of theater goers right and these are not people that I would hang out with and many of them are much older than me yeah and and I know who they are and I you know I don't want to stereotype them but there is an expectation to what theater is and what it's become yeah it's become this strange kind of almost um uh how do I want to say, this cultural responsibility of a certain generation of people that's a holdover from a different time. And their expectations are outdated and sometimes specific.

And it's not so much that they necessarily like mainstream things, but they have a definite idea of what theater should provide for them. mainstream things but they have a definite idea of what theater should provide for them yeah it should be like people talking really loudly and like debating issues in a really obvious clear way and the place should have a really clear message that you like take home with you but and also it that that experience of theater is sort of you know not unlike a movie in a certain way they want to be taken away away for a couple of hours with this spectacle. Yeah. And you actively fight that by use of silences and also by use of breaking the fourth wall or suggesting that fourth wall is a movie screen, that there is an engagement that's

required that is not specifically a spectacle. Yeah. Well, it's like I don't want it to necessarily be a spectacle, but I also want to figure out what is so special about theater. Because I actually think there's all this worry in the theater community about, like, is theater dead? Always. People have been talking about this stuff for like 75 years right but um so i just think it's funny that people keep worrying that theater's dead and no one's gonna go see theater anymore but i feel like people react to that by trying to make stuff that's like more entertaining and like more fast moving and like more glitzy

um and for me i feel like the thing theater does you can like slow time down and we can all be in the room together. Right. I didn't just to tell you, I did not feel that either play was long. Oh, that's great. At all. I don't know why. It must be why you're good. Well, a lot of people like complain about how long they are, which is really interesting to me because there's movies that are longer.

There's other plays that are longer. That's great. And I'm not like a theater going person yeah but i did not and i you know and i see a lot of live shit i've been a comedian for many years i don't sit still well i can't handle a concert even if it's the fucking rolling stones for more than 45 minutes i'm ready to go get antsy right but i i did not feel the time and i don't know why but it was good but and also like i think what you're talking about is this insecurity in in show business industry in general to create a pace and an experience that you know they're over always overcompensating out of complete insecurity of how to keep people engaged and whatever now theater is a little different but it's it no i think it's very similar in that way and this like thing where during

previews before the plays open when you can still make changes you know i have playwright friends where they'll be like oh people didn't laugh enough i have to like change the thing or someone walked out i have to make the play shorter where and then i feel like that really fucks people up and makes bad theater. Well, you're not supposed to do a, what do you call it, a test group? Yeah, exactly. I mean, you can have previews and stuff and I don't think there's any rule in theater.

Like if you're a playwright and something isn't effective, you're director and you talk about it or you decide to do something, but not to accommodate laughter necessarily. Yeah, although I think a lot of people work that way i think that is there's there's just so much fear i mean there's fear in like any art form in any medium especially law anything live is like the scariest thing ever but i feel like theater people are like extra scared and extra worried and it's like a weirdly conservative medium well that's because they're pandering to a subscriber base that they're 90

yeah yeah and then but then it feeds itself because then when you pander to those people medium well that's because they're pandering to a subscriber base that they're they're 90 yeah yeah and then but then it feeds itself because then when you pander to those people then interesting young people don't come and then it just gets worse and worse no absolutely and and i think that the difference between you know what you know how what you do you know makes its way to broadway if it ever needs to be there like it seems like the theaters that I saw these plays in was, was a great place to see them. And once the expectations of ticket sales and, and all that stuff comes in,

even Barry Child couldn't survive on Broadway when he did it. Yeah. And I kind of think it's just unconscionable and this is not against anyone who has anything on Broadway, but I kind of think it's unconscionable to charge more than $50 a ticket. I mean, I think it's kind of unconscionable to charge $50 a ticket. And any more than that is just crazy. It like just becomes some, I like don't understand what it is when you're paying like $150 to see a Broadway show. That's just like not a world I'm interested in

at all. And also, I think what you're interested in is really what theater is supposed to be, is that it seems like your struggle with your characters and creating these plays is to sort of, you know, you may not know how it's going to happen, but to sort of elevate the richness of, you know, what it's supposed to be to feel human and to have your soul connected to something, if you believe in framing it that way. Yeah. And, and, and, you know, finding it through the characters that you do. And I think that that is what, you know,

why theater was vital to begin with was to reconnect us with our humanity. Isn't that right? So it's sort of lost that focus. And it sounds to me like you want to return to that, you know, and bring in the generation of people that has no experience or desire or necessarily interest or information about what theater is. Yeah. And I think that's great.

You know what I mean? Like, that's my idea. Once a woman came to see one of my plays who had never seen a play before, including like when she was a kid, she just was like, this is my first, this is the first time I've ever sat in an audience and watched actors on a stage and i was like that's my ideal audience member like that's i want to make something that works for that person um that's just super interesting to me and like how electrifying if if if the play is good that must feel to someone who's never seen that before what's the biggest struggle that you have

in making a play whole? Like when I'm writing it or when I'm in production? One thing I noticed last night was that a consistency of character within a character, both emotionally and psychologically, I always find that fascinating because when you write television,

a lot of times they're just writing joke to joke. But you know what I mean? It really doesn't matter you know what i mean once you get it the character's broad a lot of times yeah but so when you have the time to do what you do in theater that the idea that in in say john that the Elias character's childhood, you know, kind of makes sense with who he is as an adult in terms of his emotional issues and psychological issues. And it's consistent. And it adds up as a human person. How much of the work is about finding that consistency in having that character be psychologically and emotionally sound as the one you want to create? Are you conscious of it? A lot of it's unconscious. A lot of it is just like when I'm writing it, realizing that something

I've written somehow isn't true to that character and then having to cut it. Is that intuitive? It really is. I am really slow and before I actually start writing the play, I take notes for years. I say like I have like a hundred pages on my computer of notes about every single play I've ever written and a lot of that is character.

It's not character like why does he do this? He does this because X, but it is just details like oh he went to this summer camp and this thing happened to him when he was a baby and he it's his first memory and this and this and this and just um crazy super super specific details about their lives and that sort of once that document is really long that's sort of in a weird way the template for the play like then i sort of know

everything about this person and then i put them in a situation and see what they do. But there's very little planning about what's going to happen in the play and very little planning about like, are they going to behave this way because of that? There's very little, I think my plays are very psychological, but I try not to be overly psychological

while writing them. Right. Just because I feel like in real life we do stuff that's like everything's psychological, everything's related to our childhood, but in a very like sneaky, weird, crazy way that we can never really put our finger on. Right. And when we think we're like getting to the root of it, we're like farther away than we ever were before.

Yeah, right. Because if you right because if you get something intellectually it doesn't mean that it's connected or you can do anything about it well that was my fear of therapy for so many years was just that like by talking about my childhood and being like yeah that's why i right couldn't commit to that thing or something that that actually i would be farther away from the answer and farther away from self-knowledge than ever before. Just because the second you pin something down like that, it's probably wrong.

Or it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be able to access your vulnerability in the future to write that course. Yeah. And I just believe the self is such a slippery, ever-changing, viscous, weird, unknowable thing. And I think it's really dangerous to just be like,

this is who I am. And so I do... Some people do that out of fear. Yeah. Yeah. And just, like, needing a sense of direction. So I think when I'm writing the play,

I feel like it's going well when the character, like, does something that I didn't know they'd do or that I would have never have predicted they'd do or they say something totally out of character. And then I think in the end that can feel more like a real person because we do that all the time. So you let them do that on the page and it's that excitement of discovery that comes from writing. Yeah, that's the best. That's when I know it's going well is when I do feel like there are these crazy figments of

my imagination that have taken on a life of their own. Let me set up the other play that I saw, which was John. This takes place at a bed and breakfast in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. A couple comes and they deal with it. Because there's so many

comedic elements at work all the time in both of your plays that it's a rare type of comedy. It's very hard to do. And it takes a weird confidence and commitment that you don't really see. Because the emotional depth of what you do as a playwright, it sort of relies on, I think you could traditionally

call it the slow burn. Uh-huh. Yeah. You're a master of the slow burn. And that's an amazing, it's not, I don't think you incorporate it as a device or you're conscious of it, but because things get sparse, you know, dialogue wise,

when you do hit the closure, you know, whether it's funny or it's painful, there is this, the punchline is built up through such a deliberate, and I don't want to use the word plotting, but a spacious kind of setup for a beat. Right. And in both shows, in a couple of areas,

that payoff blows the whole fucking thing open and makes the experience that you've just had all the more relevant. It happens with Sam a couple of times in the flick where just something comes out of him where you're like, what is that? Right. That that's what he's been holding in or that's what's really going on in that guy. And I guess I'm just praising you.

But but it's really nice. But in John, it's much more complicated psychologically and I think more complicated emotionally. And there are themes that are, I'm not going to say more sophisticated, but your imagination has gone to a different place with that. Yeah. And the women characters, like there's this weird undercurrent through the whole thing. It just takes place in this bed and breakfast and there's a young couple who's sort of in the last legs

or trying to salvage their relationship and he's a childhood Civil War geek and she's along for the ride and they go to this woman's bed and breakfast and it's classically the intrusive, sort sort of weird boundaryless bed and breakfast owner yeah and then she has a friend who's this uh you know slightly you know very intense angry blind woman who has her own story it's weird with plays i'm like no spoilers but yeah i can't really describe it that's what's happening well and i think that the second you really spend your, this is something I spent years doing,

like if you spend your time trying to figure out what other people are thinking, you will go crazy. Like there is a kind of madness and we were all doing it all the time and that's why we're all kind of crazy. But like if you really go full throttle, like I'm gonna spend all my time trying to figure out what the person I'm in a relationship is in with is thinking or I my time trying to figure out what the person i'm in a

relationship is and is in with this thinking or i'm gonna try to figure out what that person like you do there's like a real madness in that no it's horrible it's because you're usually wrong yeah you're there's no way to be right and then occasionally we like our intuitions are completely correct but but we don't know what people are thinking we might have like thoughts about what they're doing but that was something i wanted to that was like a form of madness that i wanted to tackle with like a character who actually was um who had at one point in her life gone clinically insane because like i fucking get hung up on you know the poetry of what makes you know theater and specifically what you're doing and specifically in that play compelling is that you loaded that one up.

The flick was pretty sparse. Yeah. And you were really relying on revelations of the characters to sort of drive the emotions of that thing. Yeah. With John, you're setting it at the at the you know the site of a massacre yeah a civil war massacre you you have this environment in this bed and breakfast that suggests an almost mythological universe definitely and i want i'd never done that

before that was like a weird challenge to myself um because I have always written very like sparse plays with very realistic settings, very neutral spaces. And I did and I also have written plays much more about men than women. You know, I wrote a play once that was like an all male cast, which was the aliens. And I feel like the flick is actually really about the guys. And I love writing for men actually it's really fun um but I was like why am I not writing for more women it was sort of a question I was asking myself and I was getting really interested and um just sort of uh I was like a really weird sort of supernaturally obsessed kid like i really did feel like all my stuffed

animals were alive and watching me and that crazy stuff was happening that i didn't understand and that my parents were atheists but i was like there's definitely someone up there controlling this you know i was just very my mother always was like you would be a religious fanatic if we'd let you you know like i built weird little shrines in my room and i've just and i i started with this play i really wanted to go back and investigate that um because it's very like uncool like i felt like i was before i was sort of like writing a play that that um with these sort of like cool dingy sets about like i don't know that there's a kind of like dry kind of like witty coolness to what i was doing a detachment yeah and a kind of detachment and i was like i want to play where

like a woman's getting her period the whole time yeah and people are talking about going crazy and there's like dolls everywhere and they're like that lady might be an angel and uh people like talk about god because i don't feel like people i don't know. I do. And maybe I'm crazy, but I do feel like we're all wandering around, like wondering about God or if we don't call it God, like the divine or fate all the time. And no one's talking about it. We don't know how to talk to each other about it. Like we don't know how to have those kinds of conversations. And so I did. I was like, I'm just going to write something that's like over the top like femi over the top like just people like talking about god the whole time there's gonna be magic but maybe like it's not real magic like who the fuck knows because i kind of feel like that's what life feels like to me

anyway um and the one dude in there is going to be this sort of like emotionally stifled well it's funny that dude is like anyone in that play is me it's that dude like it's so funny so much of me is in that guy and so much of my history and my life is in that guy so it's always so so i was like i want to write a play that's like dealing with like feminine archetypes but like i'm the dude like i'm i i'm gonna make myself the dude yeah um but yeah i also like got really into reading all these psychologists at the turn of the century who wrote about religion. And I read this one thing. One of the things that inspired the play was this thing I read that like dread is the first step in religious development.

I'm there. Yeah. I'm on the precipice. Right. And I was like, oh my God. Because as a kid, because I wasn't religious and my parents weren't religious, I was like always scared and always creeped out.

Like I always felt like there were ghosts and witches and like something, like a hand was about to come out of the ground and grab me. And I never knew why. And I like, until very recently, I was very confused about why i was such like a scared sort of um superstitious kid and i feel like in a way it was my in like a

very secular household it was my way of trying to access the divine like something bigger than myself but i feel like when you're a kid with atheist parents, like the way you do that is almost like through the spooky. That's true. Like through horror, through demons, through horror movies, through scary movies. And that's your way of feeling like, oh, man, maybe there's something bigger than me that we can't totally figure out. Right, and mysterious and unknowable.

Yeah, the mysterious unknowable. Yeah, the sad thing about dread being the sort of precipice of spiritual awakening, it's also the precipice of a lifelong anxiety problem. Right, yeah. Now, how aware of you of getting the laugh in comedy? I mean, do you know you're writing comedy? No, that's the thing.

Like every time, like I now, after every play goes up, I it's funny but i think it's funny because i'm because i'm really bad at being intentionally funny it's just like beyond me like i could never write for a sitcom really like i could never write for it i think i'm funny but i have to be totally relaxed and totally serious actually like writing a play to be funny yeah i have to be alone and not trying to be funny and not thinking about anybody else and then but i every time i fit like with john i was like this is my not funny play and and then it's like getting all these like yucks and then when it goes up it's it's weird and then the laughter always surprises me

but for the flick you knew was funny where it was funny oh i really i write it who then what is your relationship with sam gold then somebody is well i always give him the play and i'm always like this isn't funny this is my not funny play and then he's always like you're wrong it's going to be funny and then it is funny i mean it's it's i think it's not funny when i'm writing it but then when we're rehearsing it i am like hyper specific about timing like i drive everybody crazy like i'm like if it's not funny if you like you know when it's supposed to be funny yeah and i have my very specific sense of humor too like there's a kind of laugh that i hate like i don't just want laughs and actually

you don't want punchline laughs you don't want turn a phrase left i don't want punchline laughs and i don't want like um that's clever yeah i don't want that's clever laughs i want it to be about like i want it i want every laugh to come from a place of like humiliation and recognition the laughter like i say this on stage sometimes i said there's no laughter like the laughter that should be crying yes and my favorite kind of laughter is like two like sometimes when the whole audience laughs raucously yeah i'm like no i fucked up because because like i everyone thinks they're supposed to laugh right now but my favorite is when like one lady in the fifth row just like barks yeah with laughter and everyone else is like what is she like like i like when it's like when i feel like it's individual people having individual experiences i don't really like the like 300 person crowd believe me i'm right

there with you i i've designed my stand-up so it's only for a few people that's the way i like it yeah yeah see this is what makes what makes it great and why when people miss it because they're too worried about their watches is that you have a very specific style and timing. Yeah. And you know how to honor it. Oh, I know. I do feel like I know exactly, for good or bad, whether you like it or not, I feel like I know exactly how it should be.

And the thing I want it to be is totally unexplainable. And I think one of the reasons, I'm not that crazy about the flick anymore. I mean, I'm not that crazy about any play I've written like three years later, and I'm not bashing on it, but I think it ties, it's like, I started realizing my plays were a little too neat, and I felt like they were kind of like tying themselves up

in a little bow at the end, and with this new one, I really was like, I want it to be a mess. Like I'm going to be intentionally make this play like kind of in the end make no sense. And make total sense at the same. Like I feel like half the people in the audience will be like, that added up to nothing. And half the people will be like, that made total sense. That was completely cohesive. But I really want to stop trying to explain anything to anybody.

Well, that's good. Well, that just means that for, you know, for the fight you're fighting for theater and for yourself is to continue growing as an artist. So that's good. Hopefully. So are you finding that that the people you want to come to the shows are coming? No, not always, to be honest i uh i feel more and more like i have an audience and like people some people know my work and come see it but i still feel like there's a lot of like rich old people who come see it and then hate it like it's that weird thing where they buy all the

tickets and then they fucking hate it and walk out halfway through um well that's so funny because i think it's necessary what you're doing to keep fighting this fight and it's it's great that you're getting the attention and the uh awards and whatever because that will enable you to do that you will you will have to be reckoned with by those people and if they don't want you then fuck them then maybe the other people will come in yeah but the fact that theater owners in the theater industry is is you know uh trying to accommodate them by apologizing for you is fucking heinous. And that's not what art is about. So I think that Pulitzer is going to buy you a few more plays.

That's good. And the theater I'm working at where you saw John has this cool initiative where they only charge $25 per ticket, which just makes me feel better about doing theater in general. I always felt weird doing a play somewhere where they charge like $70. I was like, how are you going to get young high school students to come see this? And Signature, my next two plays are going to be there and all the tickets are $25. Oh, great. And that's just like a game changer. That's great.

So you cut that deal and it's just a matter of getting the word out. Yeah. Okay. Now let's come back to Scottott rudin and and and faustian deals now do you want to write movies so i've written movies that's how i've like gotten my health insurance since 2008 i was just like a hired they'd be like we need a rom-com about this you know you're a girl right no no you're a girl write a rom-com you know and so this is how they writer rom-com. This is how they ruin playwrights. Yes, this is how they ruin playwrights.

And then I actually had a total breakdown a few years ago. And I was like, I can't do this anymore. It's paying my bills, but I'm so unhappy. And I'm doing a terrible job. I'm not actually good at writing bad movies. And I actually had a conversation. So you were doing rewrites? I was actually doing like someone would have an,

you know, that thing where they're like, we need someone to write a movie. Based on this property we have? For this property, yeah. We like bought this foreign movie and we need you to do it, blah, blah, blah. But then I had a whole thing where I was like, I can't do this anymore.

I quit. Like, I'm just going to leave the industry. And this is why Scott Rudin is amazing. I had a meeting with him and he was like, why don't you want to write movies anymore? And I was like, because I'm done. Because I write shit. They hate it.

Then I get fired off the job. Like, I'm miserable. I have to find another way to do this. And he was like, well, if you could do anything in the movies, what would you do? And I was like, well, I'd write and direct my like own weird movie where I had total control and I didn't have to like outline it beforehand for a bunch of dippy people. And he was like,

great. Why don't you do that for me? And I was like, what? Well, I'm just, you know, and then it is my like self.

I was like, but I'm just like this young woman, like who would hire me to do, you know? And he was like, well, you should have told me like, I didn't know you were interested in directing great like i'll pay you to write a script and you can be attached as director write whatever you want you

don't have to tell me what it is like just go do it shut up you know are you doing it yeah good so that's why he's cool i mean i what i've written so far i I hate, but I'm going to try to get there. Like, I really, really do want to. I am knowing I can direct it is like a game changer because I am so hyper specific about everything that screenwriting isn't a good profession for me unless I'm directing it. Well, this sounds exciting. So he's got my loyalty for that one. It's great. Yeah. Well, congratulations on everything. Thank you. It's nice talking to you. Congratulations to you. That's got my loyalty for that one. It's great. Yeah. Well, congratulations on everything.

Thank you. It's nice talking to you. Congratulations to you. That's very sweet of you. Thank you. Are we good now? Yeah, we're good. That's it.

That's our show. What an amazing talk I had with her. I love her. I love her work. You should go see her plays if you can. You should see more theater in general. I should see more theater in general. Oh, you hear that familiar buzz?

I had to warm up the dirty old man to do my ending licks. Go to WTFpod.com for all your WTFpod needs. Get on the mailing list. Check the calendar. Check the episode guides. Get hooked up with Howl.fm. Over there, get the Howl app so you can get that WTF archive. Thank you. Boomer lives! Straight telly into the dirty old man.

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