#ignition2016

Ignition Festival Interview between Dramaturg Gabrielle Randle and Tegan McLeod, playwright of Girls in Cars Underwater

Gabrielle Randle: Tegan, this has been a big year for you! A few months ago you graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with an MFA in Playwriting from the Michener Center for Writers. Girls in Cars Underwater was produced there as your capstone project in the spring. Can you share a little bit about what are you looking forward to about revisiting this project in Chicago this summer?

Tegan McLeod: I am interested in looking at the climax of the play and where it is placed in relation to Dusty’s downfall; whether too much is foreshadowed or if surreal elements of the climax need to be threaded through the play from the very beginning.

GR: The action of Girls in Cars is set very specifically in Louisville, Kentucky. What is your relationship to Louisville? For someone (like me) not familiar with that city, what role does it play in shaping this narrative?

TM: I grew up in Louisville off and on my whole life. When I wasn’t at school in England, I was on the farm in Kentucky.

In many ways Louisville is specific because of my own experience working and living there: the women I met at Sully’s Saloon, the Ohio River—which runs alongside the city—and the death of a young women in that same river. But in many ways it’s just like every other city in America for young women and young women of color struggling against economic down-turn, structural racism and sexism.

GR: I'm interested in the dedication, the characters’ names overlap with some of the folks "who taught you how to be a shot-girl”. How much of these women's' real lives and experiences are in the play? And what about them inspired you to write their about their world?

TM: All of the women, except for Dusty, are based on real people! “Shell” who is Shelby in real life is still my best friend.

What inspired me was not only these women's’ camaraderie and community but their resistance in the face of debilitating and oppressive work place conditions.

GR: It’s been a busy summer for you so far: graduation, the Eugene O'Neill Playwright's Conference and the Ignition Festival, what's next?

Dramaturg Rebecca Adelsheim interview James Ijames, playwright of Kill Move Paradise.

Kill Move Paradise is incredibly relevant to our current political moment. Could you talk a little about your inspiration and decision to tackle these issues through this form?

It was a way for me to metabolize fear and anger. I wrote it very quickly after the shooting in the church in Charleston, SC. I remember thinking...there is no safety for black bodies. So instead of being afraid I decided to transform those feelings into something that was distinctly distant from fear. I have always been obsessed with mythology and religion in general and I wanted to use religious iconography and mythic scale to elevate these people who have been killed. I wanted to make them saints. Martyrs. I wanted to enshrine them on stage the way they are in my mind.

A central discussion of Kill Move Paradise is tied to myth, martyrdom, and our expectations about death. Could you talk about how you came to these ideas and why you find the historical and mythological connection significant?

So I think humans want myths and religion and faith because it's hard. This earth is a very hard place to live. I was raised and still consider myself a devout Christian so that draws me to the spiritual. I'm not as church going as I was in my youth but those ideals and principles are still there and still guide me. I think history is as much a religion in my life as Christianity. History is the book I read to help me live my life better today. They are tied. One could argue that religion and myth are the idealized versions of history. I think I need both. I need the Red Sea opening and the children of Israel walking across on dry land and I also need the Selma and 16th Street Baptist and Kent State and Tulsa. They all make sure I don't mess up again.

Music a critical element of Kill Move Paradise -- how has that element affected the content and structure of this play?

Music is in all of my plays. I come from singing people. I sing. In Kill Move Paradise I wanted them all to sing at some point because what is happening is hard to express in words sometimes. I felt like it was a gift to let them just sing. Not for anyone's entertainment but simply because it was the best way for them to get it out, to open up. The music becomes the thing the audience has to wade through to get to the next moment. I think the structure, then, gets to enter into an argument of sorts with the content. Black bodies singing because they need too is very different from black bodies being forced to sing or even expected to sing.

You came to playwriting through acting, how has that affected your process?