Interview with the Playwright
Allison Moore
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Return to The
Strange Misadventures of Patty
CSC Professional Equity Play
Feb. 27 - Mar. 13, 2004
Question:
Allison, you are a "displaced TEXAN (!)" by your own description,
now in residence at the Minneapolis Playwrights Center(brrr). Did you
have a little adjustment getting used to our Northern climate?
Allison:
Yes! We just had 2 weeks of subzero temps here in Minnesota--I don't think
I will ever get used to that. But I have come to really love the snow,
provided it's sunny and 25 degrees!
Question:
Can you tell us a little bit about your work at the Playwrights Center.
I know you have had at least one play commissioned by the Guthrie Theatre
while you have been there.
Allison:
The Playwrights' Center has really been an artistic home for me. I've
been so fortunate to have received 2 Jerome Fellowships and a McKnight
Advancement Grant , all of which give stipends to playwrights to support
them as they write. What's particularly unique about The Center is that
more often than not, their programs support writers, not specific plays.
So it has really freed me up to take some creative risks. In the past
three years at the center, I did extensive development on The Strange
Misadventures Of Patty at the Playwrights Center through their New
Stage Directions program .I was also invited to write a one-act play for
the Guthrie Theatre's high school commissioning program. The program commissions
4-5 playwrights each year to write a one act play for high school aged
actors in order to develop a body of work by contemporary writers for
high schoolers. The play I wrote, Cowtown, was published in the
fall of 2003 by Playscripts, Inc, and was selected for inclusion in the
forthcoming Under 30 anthology. The fellowships have also supported
my residency in New York at the Cherry Lane while working on Urgent
Fury. Because of my McKnight finding, I was able to quit my "day
job" in July of 2003, and have since completed a new full length
play called Hazard County, that's a serious look at murder, moonshine
and the impact of the television show, The Dukes of Hazard. Hazard
County will be developed at the PWCenter later in the spring.
Question:
You spent some of last year working with Marsha Norman at the Cherry Lane
Theatre on your new play, Urgent Fury. That must have been an
exciting time. Can you tell us something about that experience?
Allison:
The program is really unique in that it gives writers the benefits of
having a play go into a very bare-bones production without the risks of
bad reviews or losing money. I met with Marsha first last fall, and we
had a long conversation about the play--where she saw some holes, and
places where I felt like things weren't working. She is such a smart,
generous person, and her feedback and support all the way through the
process was just really invaluable. After an initial conversation and
a closed cold reading, I had about 2 months to rewrite in preparation
for a public reading with the cast. Because I was in the first of 3 workshop
slots, I had week after the public reading before we jumped into rehearsals.
We rehearsed for 3 weeks, and then we "opened." The workshop
production was performed 12 times over an additional 3 weeks. It was amazing
to get to see how the show changed, to hear how audiences responded--which
things ALWAYS work, vs. those that only work twice during the whole run.
It really gave me a completely different understanding of my play, and
how comedy in particular really works.
Question:
In the industry today, I know that the belief is there are not the sort
of development opportunities today that there used to be for playwrights,
such as, say, Eugene O'Neill experienced with the Providencetown Theater.
How do you think that regional theatres and programs fit into the development
of a contemporary theatre canon, so to speak?
Allison:
I think that there are some incredible organizations that do
development (meaning workshops or staged readings, etc.) particularly
well--places like The Playwrights' Center, The O'Neill Playwrights Conference,
Cherry Lane Mentor Project. What's harder is finding a theatre to take
the chance and commit to a production. That's part of what is so incredible
about the Women Playwrights Series at Centenary. It's really wonderful
to find a theatre that is so committed to fully producing new work, and
I am so honored to be a part of it.
Question:
The Misadventures of Patty... is such a wonderful, contemporary
story about the lives we live, trying to juggle our professional and personal
responsibilities and still maintain meaningful relationships. What was
the inspiration for Patty?
Allison:
In 1998, my father had a stroke, and had a pretty severe speech interruption
due to this for the first several weeks afterwards. My dad was such a
smart, well read and incredibly verbal person. He loved to debate questions
and play devil's advocate in conversation, and he was just a very confident
person. So it was shocking to see him literally unable to communicate.
Fortunately, he recovered his speech to a tremendous degree, but the effect
on him was profound. A year after the stroke, someone who had never known
him could talk to him and think he was completely fine, but he always
said that after the stroke he continued to struggle to find the words
he wanted, even if it wasn't apparent on the outside. And so he lost some
of that confidence, and began to communicate in a much different way,
but he was definitely more vulnerable in conversation, and more thoughtful
about what he did say. The play is one of the ways that I processed all
of that, and what it's like when your parents suddenly need you, not the
other way around. I also am kind of an "econ" junkie. I find
the theory part of economics fascinating. Just don't ask me to do the
math!
Question:
What kind of research do you do for a play?
Allison:
I read a lot, especially non-fiction. I'm really good at trivial pursuit.
I also will talk to people who are experts, or who have first hand knowledge
of something. I visited with a speech pathologist at the university of
Iowa Hospital while working on PATTY, and was able to observe a typical
speech therapy session with a young woman who had aphasia induced by a
traumatic brain injury, which was completely humbling and eye-opening.
Question:
We often talk about "emerging playwrights," but I know you have
been writing for many years. How did you first become interested in writing?
And.. writing for the theatre?
Allison:
When I was in high school I did a lot of acting. I was getting
ready to audition for Southern Methodist university's theatre program,
and was looking for some strong audition pieces that weren't things everyone
had seen eight billion times. I was complaining to my theatre teacher,
Mr. O'Neill, and he said, "Well, write plays with good women's roles."
So I went to my audition at SMU, and they asked me if I was interested
in any other areas of theatre--directing, stage management, playwriting--and
I just piped up and said, 'Oh, yes, I'm a playwright." And so they
asked me to send them a writing sample, which I didn't have, of course,
so I went home and wrote my very first scene.
Question:
You will be leading some workshops with "emerging writers" in
some of our local high schools while you are here in residence. We have
had some wonderful experiences with students in our MAX program. Do you
enjoy your work with young people.
Allison:
I love working with high school students especially. They
have such great energy and imagination, and a lot of them are amazing
risk-takers. Maybe scary when driving with one, but definitely a good
thing for writing. I write a lot of adolescent characters--I especially
like the way teenagers are so adept at communicating with different groups.
The way they talk to parents is completely different from the way they
talk to their friends, which is completely different from the way they
talk to siblings. And they're gutsy.
Question:
Do you have any other projects in the works right now?
Allison:
I'm working on HAZARD COUNTY, and a play called AMERICAN KLEPTO.
And I've been reading obsessively about the Great Depression and the Dust
Bowl, but I don't know where that's leading.
Question:
You are also a graduate of the noted Iowa Writers Workshop. It is reputedly
one of the best writing programs in the country. What do you think sets
the program apart from others?
Allison:
I loved my time at Iowa. It's an especially good program because
you can create lots of production opportunities for yourself there, even
if they are just workshops. Because you don't know if a play works until
you get it on its feet and in front of people, I think it's really important
for a graduate program to give writers access to these kinds of opportunities.
And Iowa works really hard to bring in incredible artists for students
to work with.
Question:
What is your philosophy, in a nutshell, about the nature of the theatre
that you are trying to create?
Allison:
I want to make plays that are exciting. I know I don't always
succeed, but that's what I'm going for. I think a lot of people think
theatre is boring, and it should never be boring. It should make us marvel
at the world, at life, at possibility, because the world really is marvelous.
Return to The
Strange Misadventures of Patty
CSC Professional Equity Play
Feb. 27 - Mar. 13, 2004
Opportunities | Tickets | Directions | Contact Us