Proscenium Live Interviews

Samuel D. Hunter’s plays include The Whale (Drama Desk Award, Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, GLAAD Media Award, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle nominations for Best Play), A Bright New Boise (Obie Award, Drama Desk nomination for Best Play), The Few, A Great Wilderness, Rest, Pocatello, Lewiston, Clarkston, and most recently, The Healing and The Harvest. He is the recipient of a 2014 MacArthur “Genius…

We interviewed Ken Jaworoski about his play “Pulse.” Ken Jaworowski is an editor and critic for The New York Times. His plays “Never Missed a Day,” “Certain Souls” and “Believers” have been produced by the WorkShop Theater Company in Manhattan and elsewhere, and his full-length play “Interchange” has been published by Broadway Play Publishing. His…

C.S. Whitcomb discusses her play, “Stoker.” C. S. Whitcomb has had thirty full-length scripts produced for primetime national television. She has been nominated for the Emmy, W.G.A., Humanitas, Oregon Book Award, Drammy, and Edgar Allan Poe Awards. Her works include Buffalo Girls (miniseries, starring Anjelica Huston, nominated for 11 Emmys.)  I Know My First Name is Stephen (for…

Simon Fill’s “Night Visits” won the Heideman Award from Actors Theatre of Louisville, where the play premiered in the Wintermezzo Festival. “Night Visits” received its New York premiere at HERE Arts Center, produced by Circle East Theatre Company. Simon was originally a member of the Playwrights Project, a small group of young playwrights nurtured by…

Sarah Ruhl’s plays include Scenes from Court Life, For Peter Pan on her 70th Birthday, The Oldest Boy, In the Next Room, or the vibrator play, The Clean House, Eurydice, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, A Melancholy Play, Orlando, Late: a cowboy song, Dear Elizabeth and Stage Kiss.  She is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and a Tony Award nominee. Her plays have been produced on Broadway at…

Christopher Shinn’s plays include Where Do We Live (2005 Obie Award for Playwriting), Dying City (2008 Pulitzer Prize Finalist), An Opening in Time (Hartford Stage), Teddy Ferrara (Goodman Theatre), Picked (Vineyard Theatre), Now or Later (Royal Court), and Four (Royal Court). His plays have also been produced by the Donmar Warehouse, Lincoln Center Theater, Playwrights Horizons, Roundabout Theatre, South Coast Rep, and Manhattan Theatre Club. He is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship…

Yussef‘s play “Threesome” was recently produced at Portland Center Stage, ACT, and Off-Broadway with 59E59. His new play, “The Talented Ones,” was recently commissioned by Artists Repertory Theatre’s Table|Room|Stage Project and will premiere during Artists Rep’s 2016/2017 Season. Yussef‘s other productions include “The Ramayana” (co-adaptor with Stephanie Timm) at ACT; “Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the…

James Harmon Brown is an Emmy-Award-winning writer who began his career on the iconic nighttime soap “Dynasty” before moving on to daytime TV as head writer for such series as “All My Children,” “The Guiding Light,” and “Port Charles.” He also co-created the ABC-TV daytime drama “The City.” As a playwright, Brown’s most recent work “The…

Josh Wilder’s work has been developed at The Fire This Time Festival, Playwrights’ Center, Pillsbury House+Theater, The History Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, The Drama League, Oregon Shakespeare Festival and The O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. His play Leftovers was a recipient of the 2014 Holland New Voices Playwright Award at The Great Plains Theatre Conference. He is a…

Your recent play, The Body of an American, has achieved enormous success. After premiering at Portland Center Stage, the play went on to win the Horton Foote Prize, the Edward M. Kennedy Prize, and the PEN Center USA Award for Drama. Can you tell us more about the journey of this play? It’s been a twisty…

David Henry Hwang is a playwright, librettist, and screenwriter. Some of his works include M. Butterfly (Tony Award for Best Play, Pulitzer Prize nominee), FOB (OBIE award), Golden Child (Tony nomination for Best Play), Yellow Face (OBIE award, Pulitzer Prize nominee), Chinglish, and Kung Fu. He co-wrote the book for Disney’s AIDA, wrote the book for Disney’s Tarzan, and wrote a new version of the book for Rogers and Hammerstein’s Flower…

Proscenium Journal interviews nationally acclaimed playwright Tanya Barfield. Barfield is a recipient of the Lilly Award, the Helen Merrill Award, and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for her play Blue Door (South Coast Repertory, Playwrights Horizons). Other works include The Call (Playwright’s Horizons, New York Times Critics Pick) and Bright Half Life (Women’s Project Theater, TimeOut Critic’s Pick). She has written for the…

We talked to Sherod Santos about his play “Between Two Nevermores,” his experimental writing style, and his advice to young writers.  What was your inspiration for this play? As a poet, I’m of course drawn to what is, in essence, the formative story of poetry and poets. It’s a story that evokes poetry’s deep-seated link…

Wei He talks about the inspiration for her play “My Birthday Party,” her image-driven writing style, and her advice for young writers.  What was your inspiration for this play? I got the idea for the story on my twenty-sixth birthday. I was going through a weird phase back then. I was experiencing something strange yet…

We interviewed Aurin Squire about what inspires him, his advice for writing and life, and his play “Defacing Michael Jackson.”  What was your inspiration for this play? Long convoluted answer: I was in a workshop led by Rogelio Martinez and he made us write down a list of our childhood rituals. After reading them aloud,…

We talked to David E. Tolchinsky about his new play “Clear,” his advice for young writers, and how teaching informs his writing.  What was your inspiration for this play? I was thinking about ambivalence. What is it exactly? To like something and not to like something at the same time. And I was thinking about clarity, that I’d…

Ellen Margolis talks about her recent commission with Proscenium, her writing process, and what inspires her.  When Proscenium approached you with the idea of adapting a Shakespearean work, what made you think of adapting Pericles? When I saw Pericles for the first time a few years ago, I both loved the play and felt I had unfinished business with it. The…

Augusto Amador discusses his new play The Book of Leonidas. What was your inspiration for the play? I started this play thinking about legacy and tradition. These both can be very compelling and positive factors for people. That is if you accept the legacy and tradition you have been raised to follow. The hard question is: What…

James Lantz discusses his play, The Bus.  What was your inspiration for this play? A few years ago there was a spate of heartbreaking suicides of gay teens, and some of them had a connection to a church or religion, and the whole thing just made me profoundly sad and angry at the same time. Then this…

Zoe Kamil discusses her play, Nine Hours. What was your inspiration for the play? This play has been a part of my life for just about 2 years (more than that, if we’re counting the period of time where the play existed as a feeling and an idea rather than words), and I’ve been asked this…

Aleks Merilo discusses his play, Tango Mike.  What was your inspiration for this play? My grandfather. He was an army veteran with a stoic nature, but I learned that towards the end of his life, he scheduled these terse phone calls with a retired navy officer who lived nearby. The brusque nature of these calls seemed to…

David Jacobi discusses his play, Mai Dang Lao. What was your inspiration for the play? I hope this doesn’t spoil the ending. The play was born from two separate ideas. The incident that occurs in the play is based on true events that occurred in 2004 at a Kentucky McDonalds. A young employee was detained, strip-searched, and…

Chris Holbrook discusses his play, Ski Lift. What was your inspiration for this play? A ski lift, for me, is the perfect place for great theater. You’re stuck with strangers whom you would never talk to otherwise, and there is no escape. Even better, once you arrive at the top of the mountain, you’ll probably never…

Augusto Frederico Amador discusses his play, Kissing Che. What was your inspiration for this play? I’m very obsessed with historical events and the impact on human lives that they exact, whether just or unjust. What caught my attention was that the persecution of homosexuals by the Castro regime was not very well known, at least by…

Damon Chua discusses his play, Black Coffee Green Tea. I am a playwright of color and committed to creating opportunities for artists of all color. To that end, all my plays, full-length and the shorter ones, are ethnically diverse or are designed to allow for color-blind casting. Black Coffee Green Tea is no exception. The piece calls for…

Andrea Lepcio discusses her play, Looking for the Pony.  What was your inspiration for this play? I woke up writing the play in the middle of the night about six months after my sister died. It is a true story and suddenly I felt moved to try to capture the extraordinary experience that was cancer. I wrote…