Posts tagged Two Things You Don't Talk About at Dinner

Day 4c: Colorado New Play Summit

Following two exciting new play readings, our guests headed into the world premiere of TWO THINGS YOU DON’T TALK ABOUT AT DINNER. One of the most exhilarating aspects of a new play festival is when you can see the play’s development from a reading one year to a full production in a subsequent year.

That’s what we experienced with Lisa Loomer’s play about how the taboo topics of religion and politics can threaten relationships. How will it change? Will it match how you imagined it? Will you be disappointed or surprised? The sense of wonder is all around us and we dive in.

Following the well received play, we all piled into The Jones Theatre for the late-night and immensely popular PLAYWRIGHTS’ SLAM. Think of a poetry reading. Playwrights regale audiences with excerpts of pieces in development. Participants include:

Samuel D. Hunter

Lisa Loomer

Lauren Feldman

Michael Mitnick

Richard Dresser

Jeffrey Haddow

Karen Zacarias

Marcus Gardley

Eric Schmiedl

Spirits are high and the crowd is loving it. What a great way to end the first day of our readings!

Day 4b: Colorado New Play Summit

The second reading of the COLORADO NEW PLAY SUMMIT just let out - Richard Dresser’s THE HAND OF GOD. Filled with humor and innuendo, this new play explores what happens when life becomes entertainment.

If you’ve ever wondered what’s more unreal - reality or reality TV - then this biting comedy fits the bill. With his love life and career in disarray, Joe valiantly struggles to make sense what’s going on around him.

Everyone continues in high spirits and eagerly awaits the world premiere of Lisa Loomer’s TWO THINGS YOU DON’T TALK ABOUT AT DINNER and the ever-popular PLAYWRIGHTS’ SLAM.

Stay tuned.

Day 2: Colorado New Play Summit

The second day of the COLORADO NEW PLAY SUMMIT had our 100 artistic team members actively engaged in five hours of rehearsal. The casts and crews of Lisa Loomer’s HOMEFREE and Richard Dresser’s THE HAND OF GOD had an “on stage” rehearsal when they worked in The Jones and The Ricketson theatres respectively.

Meanwhile, the casts and crews of Jeffrey Haddow and Neal Hampton’s SENSE & SENSIBILITY THE MUSICAL, MIchael Mitnick’s ED, DOWNLOADED and Lauren Feldman’s GRACE, OR THE ART OF CLIMBING were rehearsing in our cleverly named (and painted) Yellow, Purple and Orange rehearsal studios.

But you might be wondering what happens on these days. While directors SAM BUNTROCK (Ed, Downloaded), MIKE DONAHUE (GRACE…), PAM MACKINNON (The Hand of God), MARCIA MILGROM DODGE (Sense & Sensibility) and JUSTIN ZSEBE (Homefree) work with the actors on bring the script to life with tone, inflection, dialect, etc., the playwright spends a lot of time listening, gauging and refining.

Then lines are cut, dialogue is added, scripts are changed, copies are made and the whole process begins again tomorrow in preparation for the weekend’s public readings.

And then there’s tonight - a time for the participants to see plays that went through this same process last year and are now being fully produced by our DENVER CENTER THEATRE COMPANY: THE WHALE by Samuel D. Hunter and TWO THINGS YOU DON’T TALK ABOUT AT DINNER by Lisa Loomer.

Then there’s a little food and drink to connect, refresh, reminisce and anticipate what the coming days will bring. 

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.

Denver Center Theatre Company Artistic Director Kent Thompson on New Plays and New Play Development

In anticipation of the Denver Center Theatre Company’s upcoming Colorado New Play Summit (Feb 10-12) and to coincide with the world premieres of THE WHALE and TWO THINGS YOU DON’T TALK ABOUT AT DINNER, the DCPA blog talked with Artistic Director Kent Thompson about new plays and new play development.

DCPA: You’ve selected 3 brand new plays to produce this season. What was it about these plays that convinced you to stage them?

Kent Thompson, Artistic Director: Great writing—all with lots of humor yet serious issues underneath.  The Whale is the best new play that I’ve read in years—improbable leading character (600 lb. man) desperately trying to re-connect with his estranged daughter.  The Whale starts so dark and troubled and ends up very moving, even redemptive.  Two Things You Don’t Talk About At Dinner does the reverse—starts as a comedy.  Sort of reminds you of those (in hindsight) hilariously dysfunctional family holidays we’ve all experienced.  But it reveals a sobering truth about the US today—even with our closest friends and families we can’t talk about politics and religion.  Great Wall Story is like one of those news room caper movies of the 1940s—except this one is based on a real journalistic hoax that happened in Denver!

DCPA: Since we are the first audiences to see these plays in full production, what should we expect?

KT: Terrific performances—and new, edgy ideas.  If you like to see funny, relevant, emotional, and sometimes dark new stories, come see them.  Maybe the new plays are the Showtime/HBO shows of our season.

DCPA: Why are new works important to Denver audiences? To theatre in general?

KT: These new plays are part of our contribution to the whole field called “The American Theatre.”  We’re trying to create new stories that stick in your mind—unforgettable memories.  Denver sees these stories BEFORE they go on to New York, Los Angeles, around the country, even the world.  I hope we can create a play that becomes a classic—so my grandchildren are forced to read it in high school!

DCPA: So every play gets a start somewhere. Which plays that have started in Denver have gone on to big success? 

KT: Lots—The Laramie Project, Quilters, Black Elk Speaks.  More recently, Octavio Solis’ Lydia (Yale Rep, Mark Taper Forum in L.A.), Jason Grote’s 1001 (New York, California, DC and elsewhere), Mama Hated Diesels (all over the country).

DCPA: What are commissions and why do you offer them?

KT: We contract a playwright to write a new play—occasionally on a topic/book/etc. (Plainsong, Eventide, Just Like Us).  More often, the playwright chooses what to write about.  We offer to support playwrights so that they have time and resources to concentrate fully on writing.  In return, we get the option to produce the world premiere. 

DCPA: How many scripts are sent to you in a year?

KT: Hundreds.  From agents, directors, producers, other theatres.  We read and read and read all year long.

DCPA: What is the process for play development?

KT: Depends on what the play needs.  Most often, we bring together a director, a dramaturg, the actors, and the playwright to work on the play for a week and then hold a couple of public readings—when the playwright gets to hear the play in front of an audience.  This nearly always accelerates the process of revisions and making the script ready for production.

DCPA: So you have this annual Colorado New Play Summit. What is it and why should I care?

KT: At the Summit each year we produce 2-3 world premiere productions and do public readings of 4-5 others.  You should come see how plays are created—from first draft through production!  Plus, theatre professionals and press come from all over the U.S. to see this annual event.  It shows off Denver, Colorado and DCTC. 

DCPA: Apart from those companies devoted exclusively to the development of new work, how does the Denver Center compare nationally in regard to the number of new plays it produces each year?

KT: We produce 3-4 new plays and musicals a season out a total season of 11 to 12 (depending on the year).  So a quarter to a thirdof our season is made of mew plays.  Most major regional theatres produce 1 or maybe 2 a season—so Denver is where it’s happening in American theatre!