Welcome to mid-day. This is Nancy fusion. And today we're going to be talking about new drama drama that's being written in Minnesota and performed at the playwrights lab in Minneapolis. The lab began seven years ago. It was created by playwrights who wanted to help other playwrights get their work produced is obviously a market for such assistance this year over 600 scripts were received by the lab from all over the country operating on a budget now approach is $70,000 a year. The lab has three Twin Cities based programs at Open Season that takes a new work from his first public reading to a full stage Workshop production and staged readings where the playwright can see works-in-progress performed in disgust by director an audience. And finally a third program called the playwright's in Residence program. This year. Six Riders got a $1,500 no strings attached stipends as playwrights in Residence, and we have two of them with us today in rstudio Mark Frost and John Oliver. We also have some excerpts of their work and to get rolling literally and figurativelySketch from Mark Frost newest show he cooperated with Bill schobert. It's now running at Guthrie to entitled guindon 100% freeze dried Minnesota. It's an evening of Comedy using as its source of inspiration the work of cartoonist dick ending Norm. Have you made any progress this week have not gotten any better. You are still having trouble talking to Minnesota's and now it's gotten worse. Now, it's the children. They won't talk to us. We will Casimir asked us if he could sleep over the nordquist for the rest of the season as much we've been going for the root of the problem. I think we have a lot more success if we treated the symptoms. So I've taken the liberty of inviting a couple of friends of mine to sit in with us today. Now, they are native minnesotans.You'll have to trust me on this one. I think if we can get a little conversation going we can work through some of your anxieties. I wanted to come on in and have a seat. This is Norm and Louis Swenson North High next to me.I know John and Suzanne absolutely nothing about your problem. And of course, I wouldn't tell them anything. I think would be really helpful. If you would share some of your background. We're relatively new to Minnesota about 6 months from Tampa Bay, Florida from Chicago. We want to get back to the Midwest. I mean everything was okay. And then in September it started all the cold weather. You can get used to the cold when it's nice go with it. Don't hold anything back. well three times in the last 6 months Norms been up for promotions in each time. Someone else has gotten them some with much less experience and it just wasn't fair. They left her there. I couldn't find her for a couple of days and there's no cab service out there or anyting. Israel kept up nice cars and everything here. I think you're going to have to tell them exactly what the problem is. Well, it's it's football It's no problem. We're all football for him. For Heaven's Sake Go on Blairs Rams. But of course being being from Chicago you would be Bears fans. Nike Minneapolis Oh we do when it comes to football. You see we were raised Barre and Louis who choreographed most of the honey bear routines the track. in a nutshell it's just Well, I want a Minnesotan finds out that we're Bears fans. He tries to convert us and then we we don't convert while we get treated with hostility. Don't you think you're dramatizing things just a little bit. Well, I think we got a nice given take going here. We're making a lot of progress but I think you have to take the step and tell them about the incident. Well, I guess what pushed us over the brink was when we went to the the Bears Viking game at the what's the name of that dump that that'd be met Stadium when we got there in the parking lot some frisbee players took Norms blue and orange booster hadn't played monkey in the Middle with it the game with the headset ears on it. Just part of the fun. Oh and which one of your memory phone for tickets? We at specifically for seats in the Bears fan section and when we got there the seats were terrible. It was a pole right in front of us has refused to service and anytime they got anywhere near as they just magically ran out of food. That's not one of the vendors stick a couple of hot dogs in his backpack and it was just about this time that you came to see me at this point Louis. Please don't take offense, but I really think that you are bringing some of this if not all of it on yourselves, but and here's what I get. I get hostility. I get inflexibility a real chip on the shoulder kind of an attitude and I think that's your problem right there. I think you're a wet football fans. All right, we are Vikings fan. But the game does not rule Our Lives we have got this thing in perspective we go to some of the games not all of the games the home games and go to Green Bay. We have relatives in Green Bay Denver to Denver if we didn't take the kids skiing at the same time. So you see we have got this thing and its proper place. It is no big deal. It's no big deal with us. The problem is that you wore a blue and orange booster hat to Mets stadium Wella from where I sit that's making a Target out of yourselves the Vikings. You can have your teeth. What will keep running around we're on the way out. The Vikings are on the way down. We are the ones that are helping you out. Folks this is good. This is good what we have here our feelings. Okay, but the problem is we have to understand how the other person feels so I'd like to set up a little game. All right, everybody close your eyes concentrate. This is called role reversal. All right, you will be normal OSU will be Vikings fans and John and Suzanne, you will be Bears fans. All right, there's been sorry. Okay. Now close your eyes. We're at a game between the Vikings and the Bears will be it will be in Mets stadium since we are here in Minneapolis. All right introduction of the players out in the field comes Jim Marshall. Excellent player. He'll give us a lot of trouble today to go with it. Like it's the ball is running down. The field is on the Pennies on the 20 breaks the tackle the 40 crosses Midfield you going to make it to can't stop them. He scores a touchdown for the Vikings ever be able to score a touchdown on the Bears for a couple of games all by a field goal of your eyes open their eyes open. Now, how would you know? All right. All right, just everybody close your eyes. Okay? Okay go with them open on the 20th of the 30 breaks a tackle. He's across Midfield. He's on the party is on the 3rd if they can't. Stop nuts first Trails Grand. How did you feel about that? How did you feel? voltage I cannot help you if you will not listen to me. Now we are having just a bit of trouble with role reversal. All right. So let's go back to being ourselves Norman lowest. You will be Bears fans John and Suzanne, you will be Vikings fans. Alright your you. Alright. Now this time for fantastic will let the Bears score touchdown. Alright concentrate kickoff Walter Payton. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. I feel like such a word as I'm sorry. Who won the coffee now, this is so nice. I like pancakes. I like pancakes with a bye. Bye, baby. Bye. Bye. An excerpt from Mark Frost sandal chopard guindon 100% freeze dried Minnesota. Maybe it's a comment on the material to play ride was sitting here with John Oliver another playwright laughing at it to laugh at it at this point. Is it difficult for some of the radio with the difficult to expand on guindon Zoomer? Yes, it was he deals in a 1 panel cartoon format and doesn't really give her much and punchlines. He tries to distill a seam down to its Essence and very often is coming up with the middle of a scene. He doesn't deal too much with beginnings and endings and obviously dramatic form. It's got to have all three. So it was a problem of finding things to go around the cartoons. He was dealing with finding the essence of an expanding on it from there. And we did a lot of that with the actors in The improvisation work. And that was that was a great help. We having a lot of people working in an improvisational situation. What role does the playwright really have the playwright's got a kind of a nebulous role that point of your responsibilities at that point in our depending on other people. It's the first time I've ever been in that position and it was it's a hard one to take to adjust to initially. you've got to be able to take what they give you an In-Shape it. That's the big thing and and then try to find ways of using it with other scenes the big thing about this show was that there was no linear concept to it. We were dealing with there was initially we threw out about 12 or 15 of them in the first week There's no there's a certain amount of thematic thread running through it, but not a great deal and we had to find scenes and then find ways of linking them together in a somewhat coherent manner which was which was a lot harder than it seemed what eventually end up ended up to be that link. I think the Vikings the same sort of sort of the symbolic spirited Minnesota always coming in second somehow. Nice guys, but without that Killer Instinct, we should mention that you're a native Californian know I'm a native New Yorker for we lost the first Super Bowl sign up through all that went to the criticisms raised about the show was the fact that you were stretching a guindon one shot cartoon panel and indeed some of the places seems stretched. Is there a way to avoid it and I did some of that after after that first week. A certain amount of that is inevitable. I think when you're dealing again with him in private or a framework because so much of that is taking a moment and extending it to finding ways of of expanding again a single idea in the wall scene and I just need some judicious pruning did not go through an Open Season process. I know we had enough info but I think from the 12th cast members in the two playwrights and the one stage manager to to handle all that. I don't know that anyone else coming in with her unseeing rehearsals would have been any any more or less confusing than it already was. Was there any reason why that specifically did not go through a playwrights lab process none that I know of to be a part of the open concept. It wasn't it wasn't intended to be that We were like pretty much alone with it. That's as opposed to John olives play which is standing on my knees, which is also playing right now over at the lab itself. One more weekend. One more weekend. What what is it like working through a full process from first public reading to Ultimate staging I need actors in the directory you have but generally I find is my second experience with it. And I found it to be very exciting way to work and much more interesting than the usual way of just saying well, we have three or four weeks to rehearse display and then it opens on a certain date and that's when the people will come and whereas with the Open Season you have audience is coming virtually from the very beginning when we have an open reading and then at other points during the process we have open rehearsals that we have some rehearsal dinner open to the public and some that are sort of by in the patient and at those we get valuable criticism suggestions and and then when the play is actually performed we do at least one Symposium afterwards. In this case. It was moderated by Michael Feingold from the Guthrie Theater and that again is very valuable. It's it's the end of the concept that I guess it's based on is that these plates aren't finished products that we are in the process of developing a play and that even by the time is performed. It's not finished and certainly my kids that's not to say that is too it's not a finished player that it has a lot more work by and large the audience understands that well, we try to Educate people to that process. I think that it's a it's a pretty New Concept in Minneapolis and theatregoers in the city aren't as attuned to new work developmental work experimental work new place as they are in other cities for example, New York, and but I think that people are are learning about it and I certainly the audiences for the lab at been increasing steadily and I'm sure that they will continue to do that who were the kinds of people that show up at the lab well for the open readings in the open rehearsals the same people there's I think a very small audience people who really enjoy seeing these plays develop and they also tend to be other writers and other actors and directors to and that's fine. That's that's the comments that they have are always very valuable, but for the place themselves, I'm happy to see that we're getting Broader range of people to come in and see them, you know, and I'm thinking of a comment that one of your fellow playwrights brought up it at a discussion that I attended a couple weeks ago. And that is as a playwright. He automatically disregarded any statement made by another playwright. Well, it depends on the statement in the playwright making a statement. He just heat I think he was making the point that he'd rather hear from a typical audience member will you know in a way that's true? The most to me that the kind of criticism or comments that I prize most highly is from people who will save well, I don't know anything about theater, but I really didn't understand this or it didn't seem that the character would really do this and to me that that means a lot more than some than an Insider a theater artist who will go on and on about some minor and perhaps not very valuable comment still Dunkel and Peoria. I think my uncle Peoria likes it must be good. How much are you willing as a playwright to change a work? Oh, I'm quite willing I understand. I have maybe one play that I would consider finished and then I've written maybe 20 so I'm changing things constantly constantly rewriting plays and for this production standing on my knees in the process of rehearsing it. I revise at least a third of it. Now that started as one act play ride. Yes, two or three years ago. I wrote a play intended first as a radio play called icicles of Joy. It was actually stages stage play at the theater of involvement. And while I I like the production, I realized that there was a lot of really interesting material there that wasn't being developed and it seems to me that it needs to be to become a full length play and so Starting in January. I revised and expanded it added the third character of Joanne and psychiatrist. Yes. I think we should probably give a short synopsis of it. Okay. Well the play is about a woman named Katherine who has had a long history of mental illness and is in fact even now struggling with it has just been released from the hospital. And the place would have has two separate parts and one part is the story of a relationship that she has with a man named Robert and the other part of the play is the relationship she has with her psychiatrist Joanne and there's really not much direct connection between those two except at the very end. When Catherine again for a very complicated reason has another mental breakdown and is forced to go back to the hospital again and just at that point Robert finds out about Joanne and Joanne finds out about Robert. We have an excerpt of the play. I think just about at that point. Is towards the end of the play? Katherine has decided to stop taking her medication and as a result is very jumpy and is very depressed and nervous and she asks Robert to take a walk with it and they go down by the river and I will also hear a scene with Joanne the scene that immediately follows that and which are Katherine admits to join that she's not taking her medication an excerpt from standing on my knees by John Olive. Maybe we should buy a couple of baseball bats. Come on, really. I've heard about man eating rats right over here. This is an incredible waste land. It's not a waste land. It's an industrial park a rose by any other good God so Willow Tree need huh? Very neat right by the river. Very neat indeed. Come on in here. The most peaceful place. I know how did you find it when I was a girl when I was supposed to be playing jump rope. I was out exploring call yards quiet Canterfield the rivers surging the study vibrating with this off a load of humanity this place. He's with Vitality horrible Vitality quiet none the less are you wired these are tense times true. I used to take the old number 19. The last stop was at the Bluffs and I come down here. Yeah, but it wasn't as bad. I don't think It was always gangs of blackheads, but I could always hide. Anyway, I come down here and it's it all huddled up and I feel the weight of the city in the Silence of the river and then I start saying my name so silently over and over and then I feel a strange buzz like really good cold, but not physical at all and I can feel my eyes getting wider and then complete silence nothing absolutely nothing. Maybe I was asleep. I don't know. And then I tried doing it at home, but I could only do what here now I can't do it anymore. How come it's so easy to be alone when you're a kid because you're basic conditions all the time being with people your family your school as a grown up your basic conditions. All the time being alone was a kid. The only way to get away is to be alone, but it's a grown up and I used to spend hours somewhere in my inside my head when I was a girl that may be happy now it makes me feel sick and crazy almost perverted the only experience of happiness I have so I keep trying to recreate it. like I say sex helps but it still feels not right selfish pot helps whiskey helps cocaine, but they all leave me feeling You think I'm crazy. Nobody's crazy. That was a stupid answers a stupid question Kathy. Don't you understand anything? I'm trying to tell you no, and I don't understand why you're angry with me. I'm not and why do you sound even understand questions much less answer them? I want to be a Hermit. I want to dig a hole in one of these coal piles need carb and rats. I want orange skies in the morning and purple at night and a clouds to squeal with delightful music and I don't want people people put out sharp fields of selfishness that can cut you to shreds art. Are you happy? Catherine are are you all right. Don't just leave me alone. I got to leave town tomorrow Cleveland should 3 4 days a week at the most. Look, I'll call ya sure. If you okay yeah, sure. I wish my life could be frozen in a cocoon ignite. My passion rented under pages of Forgotten poetry. Hummus is warmbier, my brain hum disconnected snap. Shut like a hungry trap. It is my body Suites spasms winch type glazed with rust o Christ the wind the wind the wind. Yellow Katherine. Am I sorry. Sorry about last Wednesday 2. Don't get pissy. I've never been pissy in my life. I'm trying to help you. Oh, it's getting to be a lonely job. Are you taking your medication? Yes. No. When did you stop last week and tile entirely and you've been getting maybe 2 hours sleep a night, right and you've been dehydrated and experiencing muscle spasms and hypertension. Maybe if I had trouble breathing, especially after exercising, you're a real wizard, aren't you headaches does a very powerful drugs Captain. You can't just cut them off and it's got a few hundred percent better. Really then. Why do you look like a wino with the DTs like I'm nervous Junkie. How are you feeling wonderful dreams wonderful dreams. I feel like a new woman Catherine by law. You can't be forced to take a medication unless you've been hospitalized and judged unable to make decisions that exactly what happened with you. Now, if you really want to stop the drugs, if you really want to try and tackle the problem without the help of medication fine. I would strongly advise against it. But if that's what you really want, we can start to slowly reduce the dosage. It'll take a minimum of six weeks. I played with your dear cold turkey can only lead to disaster. I don't understand what you're trying to do Cathy, huh? I wasn't listening. Sorry, you expect me to wave a wand and bingo Kathy's cured go to hell. Look at when you realize that this could be suicidal. I don't care. I'm tired of being a stranger in my own body. Are you now the person you used to be I'm getting there. I'm riding Joanne riding. Do you know what that means poems are flying at me like dreams like voices. It's Beauty mean like voices Jesus. It was just an expression. I didn't get any sleep at all. You sound like my mother you both. I hate us Catherine. Can't you see we're both trying to help you. Just did I hate you because I need you. And I'm tired of worrying about pleasing you pleasing Robert pleasing my mother's Robert. boyfriend patient has initiated relationship, please sit Catherine. I'd rather not how long have you been seeing Robert couple of months. Any reason why you didn't tell me I didn't think it was important. What kinds of things to do together we go out to dinner we go to concerts to play as we make love. I don't want to talk about Roberts cuz he don't want to talk about him. What does he think of the state you're in now? I don't care what he thinks. I don't care what anybody thinks I don't care about listen to me. Can I see your new poetry? Instead of doing my poetry. Let's do your notes time is it? What I'm going to do is call your mother to discuss the possibility of hospitalization. portion of Standing On My Knees by John Olive Jonathan seem to work well for radio, in fact, the other piece that we did from our Frost show also worked for radio of do you go into projects both of you with an idea that this is going to be done for this medium. Well, I go into projects with having a Stage production in mine and I really don't think usually don't think in terms of whether or not it would work for radio or film or television or any other media. The reason that this works I think is that the number one is kind of a language oriented play on it. It doesn't depend a lot on stage action. The action is there but it's internal in the characters and it comes out through the way that they interact to language. So I think you don't have solutely need to see these people to get an impression of their characters in the way that the characters are developing. Mark I think if you're going to sit down to write a radio played you'd sit down to write a radio play and and probably make the choice about the medium ahead of time. I think things have a tendency to find the right medium if and that other whether that's by choice or or just by luck. It's hard to tell but yeah, I don't think I don't think that the most successful films are adaptations of stage plays for example, and I don't think that the most successful novels write a patient's ice cream place, I think. It's pretty hard to make a classic Addison and it's already been a classic another another form. That's a pretty general rule John Brown up this idea of language and the importance of language may be more important center in a radio setting where you're divorced from the visual aspect you feel like that's a necessity. And is there more of a focus on language? Well, I think you should always be subservient to the action of the play another words that is very important that a character goes in a scene or in the play as a whole character must go from point A to point B character has to be developed. We should always sense this and action something happening and it language helps that process fine language can make that process eloquent and beautiful but when language disorder becomes an end in itself, it creates a static dramatic situation characters aren't being developed and all we really hearing is pretty language and while pre It's fine. It's not really dramatic. One of the problems that I'm having with this play standing on. My knees is that there's a lot of that there's a lot of what we call writing in it may be too much pretty language and not enough clear and forceful character development. And that's one of the problems that we were constantly dealing with him rehearsal and it's a problem and I'm still dealing with I still don't consider this play by any means finished what will happen to it after this run. Well, I'm going to let it sit for a while. I'm at my other projects that I'm going to be working on and hopefully sometime in the Fallout take it up again. There's some production possibilities but they're just possibility so we won't really get into that. But I do want to do some reading the play brings out a lot of potentially very interesting questions about the nature psychiatry in the nature of creativity of the woman is a poet and there's the question of whether being cured of her mental illness will also cure her of poetry and whether that's a good thing and I think I really need to get into those issues to do some reading and think about it before I go back and work on the place and more for a shell-like guindon. Obviously, I would think something Beyond Minnesota would be pretty difficult to Stage. I don't know that there is any possibility for Trip from Ghana coming in and doing a bunch of Michael Jackson. It's some it's very much situated in the region. And I think it's a POS is large like the people here. So I know I think taking it spells for might be kind of advised for both of you. What is your creative process? Like you're going to let the rest for a while and pick up some other things. Do you have drawers full of Unfinished project files? It is well, I work very intuitive lien by Instinct and I'm not a very intellectual writer at all. And so my first first thing I go through when I ride a place I just sit down and without even thinking I get people talking at night and all the sudden things start to happen and plot possibilities suggest themselves and new characterization suggest themselves. And what I have to do after all of that is finished, that's fun. But I have to let it sit and sort of get objective and then come back to it at a later time and say I will this play is about this and so therefore this material has to be cut this material has to be reshaped and this material can stay but it there's always it's very important. Of time. Happens between the initial creative burst and the intellectual shaping of the play. Mark you shaking your head? Yes, I would agree with that. I tend to let things sit in my head until it becomes intolerable not to write it on the television of built-up that it just church starts coming up depending on the nature of the project if it's something specific that's been commissioned or is an idea that that was given to you then. It's just a question sitting down hammering out of that one nation it is that work against you at all important. Of time occur between the initial writing and the final shaping of the play and it's can be very very difficult and painful to to be writing something and it not real. Being sure that you're doing the right thing with it does the lab then impose a deadline of sorts, of course by the time we also try to make sure that we have projects in mind and scripts in hand before we even start. I had a bit of a problem standing on my knees in that while the project could had been sitting in my head for a long time and been really gotten down on paper until about three months before the three and a half months. I guess before the play open. So it was enough time I think but it was some pressure before I had a script and we almost got up to the opening date without a finished script to is it turn that we're adding since the last week So that was very hectic again. I think it was a highly specialized kind of situation and not one that you would encounter very often, especially adapting someone else's work. There was somebody who recently said that the trend in in drama May finally be ending in the realism and going more towards absurdist plots. Now, it seemed to be out of the realistic bag. Do you do you see that? No, I think I might be I will be attending the national playwrights conference and I just spent a weekend in Connecticut and we heard all of the place and I would say that Oh, I at least half of them are realistic play and I suppose you I guess you have to consider the O'Neill pretty good indication of what the trains are an American playwrights a is it just a cop-out? Is it easier to write a realistic play? No more difficult things that you have to adhere to it. You can't just you have to get a certain the whole a huge amount of information out and yet make it seem as though the characters are just talking about the time and day whereas in a non-stick play. You can just have somebody give a big speech at like Shakespeare does in his prologue Zora Soldier will come on and describe what has just happened in the Battle. You can't do that in a realistic play. And there's a lot more pressure. You don't do nothing. You have nearly as much Freedom with the characterizations that you do and less realistic play. They have to adhere to have to be logical and believable. It's just he's not here. You don't know they need to have. less freedom We have a third excerpt a play called the from a play called small affections biker Cristo now he is not currently but we understand he is Travelpro do I program? So we're going to play the excerpt of the play and I got cooked before microphone. God I wouldn't know what to do with a complete stranger came up and said that to me I didn't either so so what would you do nothing? I mean, I just stood there looking very dumb until he finally turned and walked away. I mean, he just turned around and walked across the street into Christie's didn't say another word know that's exactly how it was. Oh Annie, it's so hot to say that again. I wonder if it'll ever cool up swim. I never learned and I wonder if you can always sit around in the shallow end of the pool people think I'm retarded. No not on your life. Wish I had air conditioning. Do you too expensive? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I went up there one night for dinner at any turn the air conditioner, you know, he was a bad cuz I want I'll just talk. I can never hear anything. He says okay. God I wouldn't know what to do. If a complete stranger came up and said that to me I didn't either so I want to do I mean until he finally turned them off. So I mean he just turned around and walked across the street in the kresge's did he say another word kidding exactly how it was. Oh, yeah need so how you can say that again. I wonder if it'll ever coolout raise is what I think. Hey, we should go swimming today while you can always sit around in the shallow end of the pool and have people think I'm retarded not on your life. I sure wish I had air conditioning too expensive. I went up to his place one night for dinner any turn the air conditioner, you know vad bad everything tastes exactly the same like what everything I mean, it's broke the potatoes taste just like his burnt Jam as burnt toast carrot cakes famous. I'd never tell anybody about it. It's been a long time. Hasn't it? A few months a long time? Jennifer Miss Jeff I don't know. You don't know. Well, I think about him sometimes but I wonder if I miss him I don't not at all. I mean, I never loved him like that. You know, I was just being friendly, you know, I don't know. I don't know. Real good friend. Would you look at that one over there? Would you look at them boobies? Welch's just doesn't sound right in his case. I think that they're called pectoral but that's right. I forgot that happened to you sure are nice though. I do like to be smothered beneath that in an air-conditioned room yet. I want what they were being called These Days chicks chicks wolf and old men in shorts and big pectoral. my mistake I wonder where he's at now. God I like chocolate, you know, there was nothing better in all my mind. Chocolate Icee are my favorite strawberry is fine. It's cold and 3in. That's all I care about, but I don't like nothing it. Do. You know what you mean care Foreigner? a Cavallo real hot chicks You know, I never considered myself anything other than just playing in. Oh and you look look at that sky. Girl on my parent's Farm your parents had a farm. They didn't own it, but I would get like this and I lie down watch the birds fly over there aren't too many birds today too hot too hot for people at least if we went to the movies there. Are are there any you want to see twice any good? Maybe we can find one with old men and dogs. Sunday sure can be nice. An excerpt from small affections biker Christian Kirk a little after the fact would you like to set the scene? Is that a slice-of-life play ordered? But it's a slice of Life play. Yes. What kind of a life common ordinary life? That's how it's Slice of Life deals with the ordinary things. was this some a work that started as a short play and then or with his brand new work experience quite a bit because I hadn't had a play written until about four weeks before and so is mere matter of I'd wanted to do something using the director in the actors equally and so we got together was kind of like a I have the script and then give it to them and we improvised through the scripts as scenes and stuff to see what they would That different characters picked out from what they had gotten from the script and then alter any lines as long as it doesn't alter the change or change the meaning of a scene and the words blindsided much more like a king from the characters of post from a writer and an actor acting in the lines. You use the term working equally the director of the actors. Do you enjoy putting that much concentration influence and importance on on the director attitude towards writing? I guess it's a It's not you it's part of it. Please consider it part of it. Otherwise it ends up being rather stale for me. It does. you can still be the same old thing and someone trying to respond from an actor's point of view trying to make something off of page work which you know, you can succeed maybe 50 to 75% of the time and not all the time. I think when you leave it up to the others and work with them to get something a little more. Workable something that has a better chance of working. Plus 50 75% of the time. I think the you can't deny that the actors and directors are essential to their production of that. They're there to help you and you you're a fool. If you don't take advantage of that and appreciate their contribution there. They've got their talents that when the collaborative process are every bit as important to the final product. So yeah, I would I would support that pretty strongly. Well in a sense. I don't really support that because I think my players are more. Don't really lend themselves to improvisation and in a lot of really active and creative work with actors, but on the other hand, I I write for actors and I and they are of course the most important parts of any production and I try to adjust my writing to the kind of energies and choices that I see them making I think all three of us have done some or lot of acting at one point or another in there. That's a great deal of helping. Just in terms of a figuring out the inner motivation. How actors work. Heard you've done acting in a lot of the Open Season. So you've been on both sides of the defense as an actor going through an Open Season routine. Is it easy to work with playwrights? Depends upon the playwright. There are some horrible pains in the neck there somewhere really nice. It's like in the Open Season thing. It's nice to have the play right there and there are some cases. It was better to not have the play right there because they become a little bit unbearable and they begin to hinder you and hinder any interpretation of them their interpretation. And if they're very short-sighted person, you know not being Victoria, but I am the kind of thing where it's The only see it being done this way. I think it's a writer. You have to learn that. Once you bring the play and giving it out, it's going to be done. Any number of ways one of the other playwrights and residents Frank Pike. We're getting away from a director's theater Yura, and we're going back to the playwright's Kira you all agree with that interest and that's reflected in the formation of a number of groups similar to the lab all over the country and emphasis. I think in regional theater on on new place and new playwrights, but if people are realizing that the future really does depend on the development of new scripts and that's where a lot of energy has to go if it's going to continue to be vinyl. I wonder if that's not a somewhat exaggerated observation based on on a work situation within a workshop. Where of course the playwright does have a big role and maybe once that plays is finished at that level and goes on to the next level of production and the playwright's role is somewhat diminished. Is that a possibility? Sure? Well, yes Course once you've play. Is finishing once it's already been produced. It's going to go off to another different different theaters and it's going to be a possible for the playwright to be on hand for all of those production in which case a good creative director is going to make all the difference in the world. I would say one workshop for a fully mounted production and you really should let the play go after that point unless you're doing a strictly commercial situation. Where are we riding up the last minute you bring up the word commercial is that a bad word a dirty word? Hands on your definition of what is your definition of commercial or export comes in between the programs on television The Profit most of the regional theaters in nonprofit organizations commercial for the most people means New York theater and the pressures of Broadway or Off-Broadway and their extreme and they're much different than than what we're used to and it's not as a as nurturing or creative a situation that a thing. It's not what you got its its strong points and you get a larger audience. You're reaching more people and then the negative side that again, there's all those extra pressures that you don't normally have. Commercial was good when a play that has honesty and integrity and value also has some a commercial appeal commercialism is bad when it prevents plays with honesty Integrity from being for commercial at the same time as accessible. I would say that it has a certain amount of integrity. Standing on my knees on the other hand is a play that I don't think has a lot of Commercial Appeal and I doubt that. I will ever see it on Broadway or Off-Broadway or Do you all have aspirations of New York? I don't under any head to I have no desire to check is fine, but doesn't interest me at all. It just doesn't Flex at random that that New York is no longer the mecca of theatrical experience. You don't necessarily have to go to New York in order to make you feed her anymore. And that was something that was was a truism for about 30 years. That would there was no no way to to reach that kind of prominent unless you were there and I think the more we get away from that I do the better off the National Theater is going to be. Perhaps also going to lead to I guess. Theater Concepts over or dramatic themes that are more Regional in their nature already has a very good I have written a play called, Minnesota moon set in Minnesota. I should say though that while I don't consider myself a regional play right and have no desire to leave Minnesota at least permanently on the other hand. I would love to see my place done in New York because it's still of the most vital theater city in the country, but I don't think I really want to live there and have to face the commercial pressures. I'm wondering if that's not an unrealistic situation you set up for yourself Preston Jones. You mentioned got to New York with Texas Trilogy that lasted what three nine action in that kind of working the people in Texas find satisfaction in his work. You know, that's an interesting example because that particular play even though it bombed on Broadway has had dozens and dozens of performances. It's one of the most widely performed is that because it's a good plan because New York is not as powerful as it used to be and a play that fails in New York can be very successful in the rest of the country. Does it boil down to reviewers? No, I did. I think it has to do with the fact that he has this found this. support original support in Texas that he was able to fall back on and even though the play wasn't successful on Broadway there is A lot of evidence that it was a good play because it was successful in Texas. And so it was produced and Arena Stage was produced all over in New York because he went in sort of advertising himself as a Texas playwright who who it was nice to be in New York, but he didn't need to be there and I don't know if that had any effect on your not but it certainly doesn't warm the cockles of that critics Hearts developmental theater that has been charted to something that's taking place in New York and it's taking place here. Do you see it growing here in Minneapolis outside of the play? What would it need to grow? Well, I think it needs to be accepted by the theaters in this area who until very recently or even still now don't do new place Chimera theater in the round and the Guthrie Aldo. The guy should say that again 3 is doing to new places this season. I think that the producers in this time kind of assumed that the audiences are here are very conservative and won't be very interested in new players or plays that deal with new themes and I don't really think that's true. I think that once the material is introduced to Twin Cities audiences. It'll be established. Other opinions on that there's been a certain amount of resistance. I'm in local producers to produce local playwrights and maybe that's because we haven't been ready to be produced on that level. Maybe it's because of other reasons. I'm hoping that'll change. I think these are good developmental years for all of us and I'm looking to see the that reflected in the attitudes The Producers as those years progressed situations, for example, the National Endowment underwriting these kinds of projects. What tube to support playwrights in the more developmental stage the way we do it play right? So I have yes, that's absolutely necessary. You can't expect plays like standing on my knees to support themselves through because they they just won't do that. But I think that out of these developmental situation plays are going to emerge plays that will be able to support a production that trp or the Chimera theater and So to a certain extent to get the foundation of the fundamental work done, you have to have Foundation support but I think after that the place will be able to support themselves for joining us said today Mark Frost who with Bill sjoberg has co-authored guindon 100% freeze dried Minnesota and we should say that that's playing now at 3 to the next two weekends after that closing on June 10th and standing on my knees, which is now in a run at the playwrights lab John Oliver one more weekend, Thursday, Friday and Saturday night and Chris know who wrote small affections, which was at the playwright's lab earlier this spring. I thank you all. And that concludes our public affairs hour for today a reminder that almost all of our public affairs programming is available on tape cassette. There is a duplication charge for the cassette service. If you're interested in a copy of our public affairs program today or any other program call us in the Twin Cities at 22115 hundred at number is 221-1500. If you're listening outside of the Twin Cities area, but living with in Minnesota, you can call us toll-free at 800-652-9700 865 to 9700 or you may place a request by riding us at Minnesota Public Radio in care of the audio archives. We are at 400 Sibley Street in St. Paul and our ZIP code is 55101. Noontime temperature reading in the Twin Cities 72 degrees Fahrenheit is 22° C stay tuned for an update of the events calendar followed by musical programming from our Studios at st. John's University. This is Minnesota Public Radio a listener-supported service.