Play On Players

A Hipster Pup for our friends over at CMT. 

This post is dedicated to C.U.P.S. alumna Molly Burman.

Hipster Pups for C.U.P.S.

Puppies in order of show premier (A Fine Romance by Wyndham Maxwell, Apartment 416 by Hannah Yukon, Guy Code by Brendan Toussaint, When There's Nothing Left to Burn by Clare Tassanari, Period Piece by Ava Molnar and La Negrita Chronicles by Frania Romulus)

CUPS Vice President, Chloe Sternlicht, and previously interviewed playwright, Hannah Yukon, sat down to lunch with and finally got her to talk about her play Period Piece and some other things.

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CHLOE: What would you say your play is about?

AVA: I like to say that it’s about the struggle of aligning yourself with your identity. Because sometimes we seem to be defined by who we are gender wise or social wise or whatever wise and it’s part of a struggle. Deciding if that’s who you are, trying to figure out how to be the best of that person, or even if it’s who you want to be because sometimes it’s not. So that’s I guess what I’m focusing on.

CHLOE: So you have a few different worlds, two different worlds?

AVA: Yeah, well kinda three. Two are the same world but different time periods. Actually it started out completely different where there were three completely different worlds but then they ended up just melding together because that was easier to write and it made more sense.

CHLOE: Are you excited to see the interpretations of the different worlds? 

AVA: I’m very excited. I’ve gotten to see a little bit of it. A little bit of the way they’ve set up the stage and the way that the actors are just carrying themselves in the different worlds because there’s a lot of double casting between the worlds and just watching them transform, it’s been really cool.

HANNAH: Can I ask a question? If there were one thing you can change about your play, what would you change?

AVA: Ahhhhhhh just one? Hmmm. I’m constantly afraid of people seeing the “main character” Lauren as being too whiney and complain-y. She is the character who is having the most trouble getting through her problems and so of course she is going to sound a little whiney and complain-y, but I do not want people to get that idea that ‘oh she’s just complaining about her problems’.  I want it to sound real but the realest way I’ve found is unfortunately kinda whiney. So I would just go back and keep working on her dialogue till it felt right.

CHLOE: Playwrights have different feelings on the division between your life and the play. What do you think about it and do you put yourself into your play?

AVA: I feel like I definitely do put a lot of myself in the play but I don’t usually put it into just one character. Like, one character will have this thing that I’m struggling with right now and another will have something that I struggled with in the past but once I give them my problem I have them deal with it their own way. I won’t have them do EXACTLY what I did, cuz you don’t want to see that. So they do their own thing with struggles that I’ve had.

CHLOE: What is your spirit animal?

HANNAH: Can I guess? And then you can tell me if I’m wrong.

AVA: Sure.

HANNAH: You’re a lemur. You’re very lemur like. That’s what I think. But what do you think?

AVA: Lemur seems pretty cool. I don’t know, ok I hate cats, like real talk I hate cats, but I feel like I am most like a cat because I will just curl up in a warm spot and stay there forever and if people try to bother me I’ll tell them to fuck off. 

CHLOE: Hedgehogs do that too.

AVA: Oh! I like hedgehog better. Ok. Hedgehog. There we go.

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CUPS pumpkin, Ava Molnar, had some real talk time with her old A.C.E. buddy Brendan. He spilled the beans and she recorded it and then transcribed it here for y'all to enjoy:

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AVA: How do you feel about your play in its current state?

BRENDAN: In the current state I’m really loving my play. Though when I first wrote it, I wrote a majority of it like 60 pages in three days because of the time crunch. I was abroad and I was like just goofing off abroad and I was like ‘oh yeah I should probably finish it.’ It’s loosely based on my life, I kinda find it hilarious that it came to this point. It’s at a point where I feel confident enough to say ‘I wrote this. this is mine’ I’m just excited to see what other people see it as.

AVA: You say the play is loosely based on your life, how do you feel about that now being presented on stage?

BRENDAN: It’s a little bit revealing  cuz it’s about a hard time in my life, losing a person you’re really into, and there was a lot of crying on my end. That’s pretty much what it was, but I turned it into a comedy  and I was just like ‘yo, why was I even mad about this? what was going through my head back then?’ I like how I can poke fun of a bad time and have fun and let loose. I love it.

AVA: You’re also acting in your play, how does that feel?

BRENDAN: I feel like it’s a really weird version of Tyler Perry. It’s like a crappy version of “8 Mile” since its based on my life and I’m playing myself. But I’m excited. I think it’s gonna be very interesting to see. Especially since my family is coming and they’ll get to see what I think of them. 

AVA: What do you want people to take from your play?

BRENDAN: My play is literally, it’s a high school setting, horny high school boys, it’s a time when people are defining themselves ya know? So I just want people to be relaxed and at ease. It’s kinda like Kevin Hart kind of comedy. I just want them to be easy and enjoy the show.

AVA: What is your spirit animal?

BRENDAN: So I’ve been excited, cuz I heard about this question. I’ve thought about it so I’d say a cheetah.  Cuz I’m hella A.D.D. Always trying to do something, like fifty million things at once. So a cheetah. I represent, I’m repin’ loud: cheetah.

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CUPS typist, Ava Molnar, decided to take the plunge and talk to playwright Frania Romulus about her upcoming play, La Negrita Chronicles. The following is a very abridged version of their talks.

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AVA: This is a very personal piece, would you like to tell us a little about that?

FRANIA: Actually I had clinical depression for my first two years [here at Clark]. Most people don’t know that. But I didn’t know I could write, I didn’t know how to write. I tried therapy and a lot of stuff and it wasn’t helping. I was very unhappy at Clark because I’m from a very diverse town and I had never experienced racism before. No one ever called me black until I came to Clark because I don’t identify myself that way, I’m Hispanic and Middle Eastern. When I came here I had a lot of racial slander thrown my way and it just made me feel very uncomfortable and insecure with myself. I hated my parents, hated my skin, hated my hair, hated everything about me, I hated things that were going on. In the club scene, there actually was a student who kind of attacked me and was ripping off my clothes and calling me the n-word and I’m not a cryer but that night I just cried so much. Because you can change anything about yourself, but you can’t change the color of your skin. I was getting very upset because if there was a guy hitting on me and he had just asked me to take of my clothes, I probably would’ve said yes, I’m trying to get laid too. 

Yes, it’s loosely based on true events. I was silent about it, I was upset. Nobody knew who I was until last year because I was very quiet, I was shy, that’s how I was. But after he assaulted me it made me come out of my shell because he took advantage of me and the fact that I was quiet and shy and wouldn’t speak up. People take advantage of people they perceive as weak. That’s why I’d say the way I act isn’t a facade, this is Frania, I just make sure I have a very big personality because it’s a way to defend myself. 

I’m very glad I wrote about it. A lot of people who’ve heard about it, a lot of girls have told me the same thing has happened to them while they’re on campus so I’m very glad I wrote about it. I’m not scared anymore because there’s no need to be scared. But I know that the person I wrote about is going to be in the audience and he doesn’t know that I wrote about this so I am fearful of his reaction but I’m glad I’m telling the story. I know he’s gonna confront me but I’m not letting myself be scared.

AVA: What is one thing you’d like the audience to take away from this piece?

FRANIA: I want people to understand that racism does exist. Also the reason I called it “La Negrita Chronicles” is because the character is hispanic and there’s this stigma in the hispanic community where they’ll call you La Negrita, La Morenita and It’s just like why do you have to call me those names? Why can’t I be Frania? It’s just being put in this box. I mean I grew up speaking like five different languages, I’m proud of my ethnicity, I’m proud of my heritage, and I don’t like people telling me I’m something I’m not so I really just want people to open up their eyes.

AVA: Do you think you’ll continue to work on this piece?

FRANIA: Definitley. I mean my play is called La Negrita Chronicles so there are more plays that are yet to come. There are so many scenes I had to cut out, it was 160 pages it was running like an hour, hour and a half. Ok 4 hours, it was running about 4 hours. So since it is chronicles there are different pieces. And I was thinking about, I write poetry and I did this thing where I wrote a different version of a poem so I was thinking of doing that and actually writing a different version of the play.

AVA: What is your spirit animal?

FRANIA: Elephant. I love elephants, obviously. I’m middle eastern, I grew up with elephants. I love everything they represent, the good luck that they bring, their tranquility, their intelligence, the way that they mourn. I’m a very sad person. My grandma said, ‘the things you write, it’s beautiful but it’s so sad.’ I think that God made me sad because that has made me one hell of a writer. So I am an elephant because I mourn. 

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Ever wonder how Clark playwrights used to get their work out there before playfest? Here's a flyer for an old Playwright Night Audition! 

CUPS person, Ava Molnar, decided to strike up conversation with plawright (and director!) Hannah Yukon. Ava nodded along as Hannah spoke at length about her life, her work and her fried rice. Here are the good parts:

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AVA: What was the process for writing this piece like?

HANNAH: *sigh* I started writing this piece sometime last year and it started as a collection of short 10 minute plays and I gave it to Gino and he said ‘pick one and go with it.’ I guess I was trying to talk about people as people and not, beginning middle and end and everything’s nicely tied up and resolved, no, I wasn’t trying to convey any sense of resolution at all. I was trying to create a world where people are people whether that meant they were happy or not. Just showing people as they were in that situation and what that meant. So when I started writing, I know how it started now: I was talking to someone about our generation and how we’re so fuuuucked. And not just economically, politically, and culturally. We’re emotionally so detached from our surroundings, from our people, from the work that we do, we’re so disengaged. I was trying to critique that. Especially with social media and with our phones and the internet we have lost the ability to sympathize with people and I think it’s so much scarier than the stuff out there, the real world. Everything is going to change from here on out, just because of how technology is being developed. Social interactions aren’t the same before and there’s an addiction that isn’t being talked about. It’s being normalized and I really wanted to critique that. Anyways that’s how I started that, with that conversation and it just went on from there.

AVA: You wrote a piece for playfest and you are directing, do you think that your two roles have an affect on each other?

HANNAH: When I’m directing I don’t approach it from a playwright’s perspective, whatever that means, I do it from a directing point of view. It’s about getting the most truthful response. 

(My thoughts are all about fried rice right now so I really have to think about this.) 

I don’t think, at least when I direct, it’s really about the words, getting the words onto the stage. I don’t think about how I would’ve written this differently. When I write, I write and that’s it. There’s no, ‘oh how would so and so stage this?’ so no that doesn’t affect my writing process at all. If I want to have an elephant, I’ll write ‘there’s an elephant from the ceiling’. They’re separate worlds. They are, but they’re not though. I think, to answer your question for realzies, when I write I don’t think of how it’s going to be produced but when I direct I read it both from an acting and playwriting perspective but in the end it’s all about getting the truth.

AVA: What is your spirit animal?

HANNAH: *laughs* I love giraffes but I don’t think I’m a giraffe. 

Funny, I was talking to Shauna yesterday about personalities and she said, very casually she said ‘you know because you’re a type A and I’m type A...’ and I was like ‘wait, I am?’ It was something I’ve never thought, I’ve never though I was a type A personality but yeah she’s right. I mean we all like to think we’re something different but people really see us a certain way. 

Maybe, I don’t know, a wolf? But that’s so savage. I don’t think I’m that savage. maybe like a baby wolf. I’m like aggressive but I still like to curl up and *makes strange baby wolf noise that sounds more like a cat meow with small paw movement* Or a cat maybe. A cat wolf.

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CUPS mascot, Ava Molnar, was recently granted the privilege of talking to one Wyndham Maxwell, writer of  A Fine Romance. What she learned she will now publish in this scandalous exposé.

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AVA: Do you think being an actor has had an influence on your writing?

WYNDHAM: I’d like to say that, my idea is that it has helped. Probably people reading my play might disagree with this, they’d say “oh an actor wrote this and it’s bad because of that.” I don’t know. It seems to me that I am able to picture myself doing things in a way which, actually in some ways is frustrating because sometimes you can’t convey that over a piece of paper, or I  can’t or I haven’t learned how to. I am able to very clearly know how perhaps I would do something and I think that that’s obvious but it’s not obvious. 

AVA: Do you have a favorite spot where you like to write or somewhere you find it easier to write?

WYNDHAM: I don’t particularly find it easy to write anywhere. It’s sort of like once I get onto a roll that’s nice. I guess that almost always happens in my bedroom because that’s where my computer is set up. I don’t often go other places.

AVA: There’s a lot of music in this piece, talking about it and such and you’re writing music for the show, right?

WYNDHAM: Yes I am doing my best to write music for it right now. It’s not a style of music I’ve written before, it’s a little more advanced than the music I would write so it’s difficult. But I’m trying to do it and hopefully it will be good. and I’m gonna have some help from some people so that’ll be good

AVA: Are there any artists that have inspired it or that you’re listening to more?

WYNDHAM: Well certainly I think a big influence on some of the philosophy of the piece and the aesthetic is probably Stephin Merritt who is the songwriter for The Magnetic Fields and a lot of other groups but most famously The Magnetic Fields. When people have asked me that I’ve said “69 Love Songs” as an album as something that’s always been something that got in me. Other than that it’s music from Fred Astaire movies I guess. The title is based on a song from Swing Time. 

AVA: Do you think you’ll continue working on this piece after production?

WYNDHAM: That’s a good questions, yeah I’d like to think that I would. It’s not often when you make things that you get to fix them afterwards. There are things I’ve made in the past that I cant fix because they’re already, I mean with theatre it’s over and with music it’s gone but a play you can fix and someone can do it differently again. So that would be cool.

AVA: What’s your spirit animal?

WYNDHAM: Somebody told me what it was once. I don’t think they were qualified and I don’t remember what it was but I know I was told by someone who was unqualified what my spirit animal was. This is not something I think about very much.  I don’t know. Something like a...like a cool... I don’t know Ava, I don’t think about animals that much.  I think of myself as...um...I don’t know. Like a cool badger. Cool badger sounds pretty good, right? I guess so.

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Throwback Thursday - Fall 2010

The Clean House by Sarah Ruhl, directed by Chelsea Long

From left to right: Courtney Little as Virginia, Molly Burman as Matilde, Mark Robson as Charles, Betty McCarthy as Ana and Laura Menzie as Lane

CUPS president Ava Molnar sat down with Clare to discuss her upcoming play, When There's Nothing Left to Burn. The following are snippets from their conversation (for the sake our readers, all unnecessary "likes" have been edited out of this piece).

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AVA: Do you have any favorite parts of your play, ones that you just wrote and were instantly happy with?

CLARE: Yeah, the first scene just has not changed almost at all. It’s where the two main characters meet on a roof and I wrote it a little over a year ago and it has not changed much. Everything else has gone through big waves of change and sometimes I’ll come back to things but the first scene was just something that I never wanted to fuck with again. It seemed good. It seemed set. I watched it in rehearsal the other day and I felt really good about that.

AVA: The characters you wrote about, do they remind you of real people you actually know?

CLARE: Yeah. Actually, the first time that my boyfriend at the time read it, he read the scenes that the two main characters are in and he said, “Clare you have successfully mastered your bipolar disorder. It’s literally you talking to yourself, just two very polarized versions of you.” Which is true. Also, the character Wynne is a mix of a lot of different people, actually a compilation of a lot of different men in my life, which is interesting because she’s female. I never even thought about making her a male. When I tell people that it’s semi-autobiographical they assume that I’m the female character which is incorrect. I’m definitely the male character. For sure. 

AVA: Do you have any special space that inspires you to write or is conducive to writing?

CLARE: I wrote, when I started writing it, the first scene I wrote, that takes place on a roof, I wrote on a roof. Which, I really liked that. But then I went back up there when I would write other scenes that were also on the roof, it didn’t really always work. Usually I can only write really late at night so it’s like four in the morning and I’m in a big chair with lots of blankets and some tea or franzia or peanut butter.

AVA: What’s your spirt animal?

CLARE: Ok. This is a big question. This is a big question because I look like a deer, and I often feel like a deer, and I have been told that I am a deer, but I’ve recently discovered a website called animalinyou.com, it’s wonderful, and I’m a penguin and that feels right too. So I’m not gonna commit to either. I’m a penguin deer combo. I think that’s right. probably closer to penguin if we’re being honest, because the description of the penguin on the site was “a bird condemned to live it’s whole life on the ground” so dramatic and I just read it and thought “Yeah. Yeah that’s me.” 

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Check out When There's Nothing Left to Burn November 14th and 16th