“How long have you been writing and what got you into playwriting?”
“I think I wrote my first story when I was seven, so I’ve been writing pretty much my whole life. In terms of playwriting specifically, I wrote my first play in undergrad, so that would have been now 20 years ago. What I think always interested me in playwriting, specifically, is really dialogue and you'll see this with The Depths being such a dialogue heavy show it comes through. I like playing around with how people speak. Even when I write novels and short stories and things I really love the interplay between characters as expressed vocally. I kind of lean on that a lot more than I do with description or with observation. There's something about the way that people use words to accomplish goals or to hurt somebody or strengthen their relationship with somebody or to land a point. I think that word play is very fun and I really gravitate toward that no matter what medium I’m in.”
“Is this the first play of yours that has been produced?”
“No, so let's see what is the first one that was produced? There was one that I had produced that I had co-written with a friend. This is actually the one I wrote in college with a friend. It was produced on a small stage in St. Louis. Then the first kind of bigger one was a play called Death and McCootie that I had in the 2013 New York international fringe festival.”
“The entire play takes place in the chamber of a cave, which makes it feel very claustrophobic. What was your inspiration behind this?”
“Yeah, I had been observing the way relationships are often handled in movies and books and things and in most cases the way that breakups happen is, it happens that someone breaks up with someone and then the characters go away. Then they process. And then they have kind of these budding head moments throughout the story. I became really interested in “well what would happen if you couldn't go away?” Like what would happen if you had to go through the entire process right then and you had to break up with someone, but knowing that you wouldn't be able to step away and come back later. So that was the whole premise of the idea and from there it was just kind of figuring out what is the best way to showcase that? Is it, they get stuck in a small room together? What I like about the cave and why I ended up going with the cave idea is that the stakes are so high there. If you’re stuck in a room, temporarily, until someone finds you and opens the door the stakes are incredibly low in terms of survival. So the whole focus is on the relationship. I like the idea that they are so focused on the relationship, even though their lives are at stake here. I think it adds a layer of complexity that shows what is important to them. Like they don't talk just about their relationship the whole time. They go back and forth between “are you breaking up with me” and “how’re we gonna get out of this cave.” So it gave an opportunity to really kind of play with a whole range of emotions because the stakes were so high.”
“There's the common phrase “opposites attract” when it comes to relationships, but Sam and Rachel seem too different to work. What was your thought process behind this while crafting these two characters?”
“I don’t know if I would think that they’re too different to work out. The basis for the characters is more personal than that. Something about this play that strikes me as interesting, while looking back, is at the time I was in a marriage that, not long after I finished{this play}, ended. But when I was writing this play I didn’t realize that the marriage was in trouble. And then it wasn't long after this that it became obvious that it was in trouble and going to be ending. So then while I was writing it, it was just sort of playing with characters. After the fact, while looking back at it, the first time people were doing a table read for it, I thought, “oh this is about me. It is a semi-autobiographical work about my relationship with my wife at that time.” Sam and Rachel's personalities really are kind of over blown versions of us and how we would interact together. There’s lots of liberties taken and stuff too, but when I was writing it I wasn't even really cognizant of that, so it's kind of strange that I was working through something I didn’t realize I had to work through.”
“The Play is very serious with two people stuck in a chamber, but the play is riddled with comedic moments, so what was your reasoning for this?”
“I think that's life. I think that things are almost never so one way all the time even when it's a life threatening situation. These are people who have been together for a long time. They know each other inside out. There’s gonna be humor there because, first of all, that's Sam’s personality in general. I think it's safe to say that he uses jokes and humor as a defense mechanism. And some of the humor in it is just not something that they think is funny, but their interplay is just kind of very standard frustrated relationship fights. You know when you have the benefit of being outside of that relationship that's when the humor comes in. So it's part of who Sam is, it's part of observing what they’re going through. But I think that’s just how life is. Even in bad situations you’re gonna make gallows humor jokes. You’re gonna try and make the best of it. Different people have different versions of that. But I think, in terms of play structure, its not my style to write something really dower. There are definitely some heavy moments in this script and obviously the storyline gets pretty heavy. But I’m not really interested in writing very dramatic, serious, long form work. I work much better with more playful fun things. It was fun to kind of play with that tone in this serious situation. One of the benefits of doing that is when you have that sort of humor, the humor makes the darkness darker and the darkness makes the humor funnier. They really play off each other really well, if you can get that balance of ping ponging back and forth in the right way.”
“What do you hope or think people will take away from this play?”
“I don’t think I really have any expectations of what people take away from it. What tends to be interesting when people read it… is to see how people layer themselves over these characters. You know everyone can relate to a challenging relationship, even if it's not a romantic one, everyone has challenging relationships sometimes. So kind of seeing which pieces of their relationship stand out to people. One of the things I like to do is to just listen to people share which parts of the play they're stuck with afterward. Which I think gives really good insight into the things that resonate with what's going on in their lives. I don't really have any particular hopes for what people take away. If there is one thing, I just hope people can see themselves reflected in some piece of this.”
“My final question for you. Which is a very hard question. What is your favorite play?”
“My favorite play is Pillowman. It is a great show, when done well especially. Again with the darkness in humor. I think Mark McDonagh is so expert at that. He obviously goes a lot darker than I do, but the way he is able to get such sharp humor out of these incredibly dark situations is fascinating. The themes he explores there, I love the way he handles it, so I love almost all of his work, but I think Pillowman is my favorite play overall.”