Talking About Two Things You Don’t Talk About At Dinner

by Sylvie Drake for Applause magazine

The highlight of her film acting career, says Lisa Loomer, was getting to say, “Wanna go out?” on screen to Paul Newman. “I was frustrated by the kinds of roles I got, not so much in the theatre, but certainly on TV and film.

“I played a lot of Latin hookers.”

It’s one of the reasons she became a playwright.

Loomer, who was born and grew up in New York until her family moved to Mexico when she was in her teens, has shuttled a lot between both countries. While under the acting tutelage of Wynn Handman, Artistic Director of The American Place Theatre in New York, Loomer was encouraged by Handman to turn some of the monologues she had developed at his theatre into a one-woman show. From there she moved on to character comedy and some standup and eventually worked at INTAR with Maria Irene Fornes, another important mentor who encouraged her to write. Her first full-length play, Birds, was staged at South Coast Repertory in 1986 and she was off and running.

“I was no longer an actress,” she said, “I started to eat. I stopped waiting tables and began a writing career.”

Many plays and awards later, Loomer’s Two Things You Don’t Talk About At Dinner is about a highly diverse group of friends and family with widely divergent opinions and convictions attending a Passover Seder hosted by Myriam and Jack. As the dinner conversation careens into politics and religion, it goes terribly wrong—or right, depending on the point of view. The play is receiving its world premiere production after being read at last year’s Colorado New Play Summit.

Applause asked the playwright, who now lives in Oregon, a few questions.

Applause: Is Two Things based on an actual event?

Lisa Loomer: It is inspired by an actual event, which I have fictionalized of course… I find that sometimes the parts of plays that are hardest to believe are the “true” ones…. So I will tell you that I have a dear friend who has a yearly Seder and one of her oldest and closest friends who always attends is Arab American. They do not agree about politics. They love each other. That was the inspiration for this play. I should add that I have other friends whose political beliefs differ from mine and it’s gotten me into trouble. So I wanted to write a play that deals with family and friendship being tested by political and religious differences. 

My computer is a war zone. I get all the emails from my Jewish friends who are pro-Israel and, often, anti-Arab. I get all the emails from my Arab American friends who are pro-Palestine and, often, anti-Israel. I watched documentaries for months, I read books, I talked to experts, I talked to folks. The situation is mind-boggling, cruel, frustrating, heartbreaking. I’m not a politician. I’m just a writer. Usually a play takes one side or the other. I wanted to give voice to both sides in one play. Because my only hope is for us to hear each other.

A: I see from your bio that you are of Spanish and Romanian descent. Any Jewish antecedents anywhere?

LL: Part of the mix that I am is Jewish—although I was raised without religion—and I do believe in the concept of tikkun olam [repairing the world]. That said… I feel that people will come to the theatre full of passions, preconceptions and prejudices and I’d hate to add to that by giving them the chance to have preconceptions about its author. Especially since everything about me is in this play. More and more, I like to let go of labels…and just want to be described as a “writer.” 

A: What is this play’s genesis?

LL:  The idea came after attending my friend’s Seder. When I had a first draft, I showed it to several people, including Jews, Christians, Arab Americans, and a Palestinian friend who had shared his story with me. My passionately pro-Israel friend is extremely supportive of this play and grateful I wrote it. But. She’d like for the character, Myriam, to have even more dialogue in response to things that Sam [the Arab American] says that she doesn’t agree with. And, of course, my Palestinian friend feels the same [vice-versa]!

A: How long did it take to write it, start to finish?

LL: Always impossible for me to say, because I do other work in between. But I wrote a chunk of it in a week at the O’Neill [Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, CT, that fosters playwrights and new plays] and, coincidentally, it was Wendy Goldberg who invited me. [Goldberg, Artistic Director of the O’Neill, is the director of this Denver Center production.] I had been researching and living with the play for quite a while. And then, of course, I made a million changes last year…and will continue to do so in rehearsal.

A: You mention the Sephardim, who originally were Jews from Spain and remain mostly Jews of the Mediterranean basin. How did they cross your path?

LL: I’m interested in people who have two things going on in their blood and in their culture.

A: You said about something else and I quote: “Clever wasn’t what I was after. It wasn’t that I simply intended to be funny, but that comedy was a way to get at something else.” Is this also what you hoped to achieve with Two Things?

LL: I was surprised that the play played so funny in the workshop production. If my work is funny, it’s just in my cereal. It’s my skewed way of seeing things. That said, I am grateful when something turns out to be funny because I’m usually trying to get at something pretty serious and laughter opens us up and makes it easier for us to consider different points of view.

A: Not to put too fine a point on it, but what would you call this play? A comedy? A tragedy? A tragicomedy? Neo-realism? Something else?

LL: An often funny play about some serious things.

A: What do you hope an audience will take away from this play?

LL: How important it is to hear the other side… if we are to be friends, family, co-workers… or co-existers on this planet we all claim as “home.” Home-land.

I do expect that this play will be controversial. It seems that, to present characters that are pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel in the same play is, in itself, controversial. Some people do not even like the idea of hearing the other point of view in a play! I have friends who are quite radical in their allegiances… on both sides. But what else is an evening of theatre for if not to promote discussion, even heated discussion?

My main characters are bound together by a shared history, they come from the same town in Massachusetts, they’ve known each other all their lives, their parents knew each other. They all want peace. But, as one says, “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom-fighter.”  

Then again, in terms of controversy, most of my plays have been controversial. I’m used to it now. I argue with myself, all the time. I once read in a psychology book that 97% of what we see, in a play or in life, is what we already believe… and the rest we just filter out. So we come to the theatre pretty loaded.

It’s rare that someone leaves the theatre thinking, “Hey, that really opened my mind.” Still, I like having a bunch of characters that see a situation from different sides. And maybe that’s where the comedy comes from, in part. If you can put yourself in someone else’s shoes for a couple of hours—and laugh in the process, maybe cry—that to me, is a good night out.

A: What are you working on now?

LL: I’ve just written a play about homeless teens in Oregon, some of whom consider themselves “homeless,” others who see themselves as “homefree.” *

I’m also writing a play for the Cornerstone Theatre’s upcoming cycle of plays on hunger. Mine takes place at Homegirl Café, a restaurant that trains, and is run by, female ex-gang members in L.A. 

 * Homefree was commissioned by the Denver Center Theatre Company and is being read as part of this year’s Colorado New Play Summit, Feb. 10-12.