For an emerging playwright there’s nothing like getting your work published on Indie Theater Now, run by the amazing Martin Denton who single-handedly does so much for the New York Theatre scene – championing plays and playwrights alike.    But how about getting three of your plays published on Indie Theater Now in just one month?

Meet Natalie Menna, an award-winning playwright and actress who is celebrating the fact that three of her plays were just published and are now available for purchase.  All different in scope, length, and subject they still all have Natalie’s signature brand of insight and humor:

Natalie chatted with me about where her comedic voice comes from, how she handles each milestone of success, and puts to rest the question of ever meeting a poor vegan.

Natalie! February was a terrific month for you! You had 3 of your plays published on Indie Theater Now. Amazing! So, first of all, congratulations.
Natalie Menna: Thanks, Karen!

Secondly—what does it feel like to now have your work out there officially? Is there a feeling of “I’ve arrived”?
Natalie: If I ever feel that way, please tie my hands to the bedpost. And not in the good way. Seriously, if I feel that way ever they’ll be no need to write anymore. I write precisely BECAUSE I’ve never thought of myself as arriving, arrived, about to arrive, or on the way to arriving. Departing, maybe, on a sinking ship …

Of course, publication isn’t the only way to ‘arrive’ right? All three of your plays have gotten acclaim by winning awards. What goes through your head when you find out that something you’ve created is not only being celebrated with a nomination, but then championed with an actual award win?
Natalie: I do like awards! Momentarily, I feel like I’m not on that sinking ship. But then I’m right back on it. Hours. Sometime minutes later. And then I keep writing.

In Roberta, I-Pod, and Zen A.M. you’ve shown you have a knack for writing, if not comedy per-se, then extremely comedic characters. When you conceive of a concept for a play do you set out for it to be funny, or is that just a part of your personality that shines through?
Natalie: This is a tough question. Requires me to analyze myself, which I hate. I only like analyzing others. Let’s see — a lot of people say this, and I wholeheartedly agree — “There’s comedy in everything.” EVERYTHING! That’s the way I’ve survived my life so far. The way we all do. I don’t think I consciously set out to write a comedy. I can be writing about a serious topic, for example, my play Committed, which deals with the last two days of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh‘s life before his murder. A regular laugh/riot, no? Believe it or not, audiences for the reading of that play were laughing steadily throughout. Humor is the ultimate coping tool, even under the worst of circumstances.

I’m also of the Larry David school of comedy – that anyone, anything, or any circumstance can be used for comedy. I think sometimes this clashes with the aesthetic of the current climate in theatre today, but I won’t let this affect my work. Comedy is life, and there’s comedy in everyone and everything on the planet.

I’ll be blunt: your main characters are very fun and interesting on the page, but they definitely come with a lot of issues! Frankly, I think if I was friends with Roberta, let’s say, I’d want to pull my hair out. And yet the play is fantastic. What’s the key to making a character likable on the stage even as you know that in person they’d be unlikable?
Natalie: Really? I feel like all of my friends, including myself, have BEEN Roberta (well maybe not to that degree!).  But sure, at one point or another … I think maybe it’s about heightening the reality — I seriously have never gotten this obsession with ‘likable’ characters — sort of like what David Mamet says about the ‘polemic’ play – BORING! (Despite disagreeing with him politically, I LOVE his writing).

I love creating characters who are deeply flawed, bad examples, crazy, self-involved, etc. That’s why it’s theatre! When I am in an audience and a play has a character who ‘represents’ goodness, morality, nobility, etc. I feel so bored I want to slash my wrists. (Okay –that’s a tad dramatic– I just want to go to the restroom and never return.) Bring on the crazy! That’s entertainment. That’s theatre!

And on that note, (and this may seem obvious but you’d be surprised) just because my character is saying something does not mean I agree with it. As an example, in my solo show i-POD, the character at one point says “No coincidence I’ve never met a poor vegan”.  A playwright approached me after the show and informed me that he was offended and knew many poor vegans. But of course! It’s this character’s view!

I think I may have digressed. Back to your question. I think people are responding to the uncensored truth. I try to create characters that are always speaking from their truth. Unpleasant or not. I try to avoid ‘flowery’ dialogue intended to make the character look like ‘a good person’. And I think people crave the truth. The truth of that particular character and their life.

You make a good point, Natalie.  Flawed characters are speaking from a place of their own truth – and letting the audience go along for the ride means bringing them on a specific journey.  Getting inside the head of someone who thinks a particular way is what innovative and audacious theatre is all about!

Now that you’ve got three published works and they can be accessed by other people, what would be your biggest dream for these shows?
Natalie: To have audience members say “That hit me. That made me laugh. That made me think differently“. That’s all. That’s nirvana.

Well, Natalie, based on what I’ve read, you’re well on your way to nirvana already!  Here’s to more truth, more flaws and more productions!

~~~

For information on how to purchase any (or all!) of these plays by Natalie Menna, simply click here for more information.

~~~

NATALIE MENNA is an award-winning playwright and actress living in downtown Brooklyn. A native New Yorker, she recently won Outstanding Overall Production of a Play and Best Actor for her full-length drama Committed at Planet Connections Theatre Festivity 2015. Committed, produced by Ego Actus, received six nominations, including Outstanding Production of a Staged Reading, Outstanding Playwright For A New Play in a Reading, Best Director, Best Actress, and Two Nominations for Best Actor.

She was nominated for Outstanding Writer for her full-length comedy Zen A.M. in Planet Connections Theatre Festivity 2014. Her solo show Roberta! was featured in United Solo Theatre Festival, Theatre Row, in November 2014. Select previous awards include The Nettie Award for Best Solo Show for her play I-pod in the Network One-Act Festival, and Best Actress for I-pod in The Midtown International Theatre Festival. Her play Hiroshi-Me, Me, Me was a finalist in both The Strawberry Festival and The Network One-Act Festival, with two nominations for Best Actress and Winner for Best Supporting Actress.

Her work has been developed with Casey Childs, Andrew Leynse and David Caudle at Primary Stages, and Nicky Silver at The Vineyard Theatre.

~~~

INDIE THEATRE NOW is an engine for discovering new American drama — one that enables teachers, students, actors, directors, producers, and artists of every stripe, as well as those not involved in the theater, to experience the brilliance of contemporary indie theater as close to first-hand as possible.

Related Posts:

• Get STUPEFIED By Paul Hutcheson
• Acute…Girl: 10 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2016 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)
• So Amazing: 10 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2016 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)
• CLENCHED: 10 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2016 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)
• A Broad Abroad!: 10 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2016 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)

How you feel about Before Your Very Eyes (Written and Directed by Edward Elefterion) depends very much upon the person you are, what you believe about the events of 9/11, and whether or not you are a person who trusts what they see and takes it for truth, or if you are a person who needs evidence to support everything before you’ll believe it.

Before Your Very Eyes starts off as a piece about raw emotion – but quickly becomes a piece about something quite different.  For the rest of the play it vacillates between moments of poetic beauty and moments of uncompromising activism.

Bobby Abido, Damon Pooser and Sanam Erfani

The play begins with a scene that brought an event that happened almost a decade ago right back to the present day – two woman: Kate (Elyse Knight) and Evonne (Diana DeLaCruz) waiting in hyper hysteria for word from their husbands, John and Erik.  The disembodied voice of Erik’s cell message (Arthur Aulisi) is ghastly and a little too vivid; Kate is almost burned by what she hears Evonne’s husband Eric yell into the phone.  And hearing the last words of this desperate man only makes her believe more strongly that her own husband, John, will be coming home safely.

When John (Damon Pooser) actually does walk through the door it’s a relief, but a short-lived one.  Now begins the story of how tragedy effects people differently, and how people can abandon each other emotionally when what they’re really trying to do is find one another in the ashes.  The point, and theme, illustrated most poignantly by John and Kate and even Evonne’s story is that the people who were left to deal with the emotional fissure of 9/11 often felt most abandoned not by those who died but rather by those who lived and could no longer connect with each other.

Before Your Very Eyes quickly folds in a second story thread; that of Amir (Bobby Abido) and Lakshmi (Sanam Erfani) who also lost someone during the World Trade Center collapse.  Amir, an inquisitive person by nature, spends that fateful September day snapping photos of what he sees, including people jumping from the buildings.  Confounded by the pieces that don’t add up to him, and wracked with grief over the loss of his brother, Amir begins to amass information he concludes is evidence that the World Trade Center event was an inside job.

At first Lakshmi is terrified by what she perceives as Amir’s crazy ranting.  But soon enough she too becomes convinced that there are a few too many things that don’t make sense to her.  Together they build a website, and eventually a documentary using user-submitted information as evidence to strongly build their case. They address in conversation their need to separate themselves from the “crazies” who are coming up with such ridiculous theories as the event being caused by “Reptilian shape-shifting aliens”.  Amir’s ardent research brings him in contact with both Evonne and John and one by one,  the stories start to go deeper.

If  you are someone who refuses to sit by and be told what to believe, then the Amir character will resonant very strongly with you.  Bobby Abido plays Amir with an anxious energy, he is in constant motion both physically as well as mentally.  As Amir he knows that time has run out and he must do what he can to show people that there is a story that they’re not being told.

Elyse Knight and Damon Pooser

If you are someone who believes the inward journey is more important that the events around you,  then the Kate character will be your strongest guide through this play.  Elyse Knight takes Kate from panicked to grateful to confused to frustrated, and when she delivers a line to her husband that says (paraphrasing) “Last year I couldn’t wait for you to come home.  Now I wish you never had!” you can feel the anguish she’s going through – as if the World Trade Center spit back a husband from its depths that resembled the man she loved but one who acted completely differently and couldn’t connect with her in the same way ever again.

I”m not sure how I feel about these two themes being mixed together.  Do I think they can co-exist within the same conversation?  Yes.  But do I think they can exist equally - plot-wise  – in the same play?  Not as much.  Each topic is weighty, therefore each carries the mark of a main plot.  Two very strong themes seemingly fighting for the spotlight, neither being relegated to the role of sub-plot does not always equal a play that finds that sweet spot.  While the character of John seems to be the true thread that ties both ends of the story together, I’m not sure that the character creates enough of a balance between the two worlds.  While Damon Pooser does an excellent job with the character of John, there is a large responsibility put on that character’s shoulders.   Overall, I felt Before Your Very Eyes was too sentimental to be strong cautionary tale, but then it was too radical to be an emotional story.  And yet, for some, that may be the perfect way to tell a 9/11 story – for that may be exactly where their own feelings of 9/11 come to rest.  In that respect then this play is a great voice for those who are still confused by the events.

The good news is, if this subject intrigues you, but if you feel puzzled, or driven, or emotional, or anything at all after the performance, you can stick around for a talk back with the ensemble and explore your own feelings with some lively discussion.  Additionally, some  special post show panels will be held:

Friday June 11th: “Historical Events and the Media” – MJ Robinson, Ph.D.

Saturday June 12th: “Memory, Media and Misrecognition” – Marion Wrenn, Ph. D.

Related Posts:

• Doctor Frankenstein’s Magical Creature – Cries In The Dark
• That’s Quite A Story – The Tragic Story Of Doctor Frankenstein
• It’s A Triple Play For Natalie Menna!
• Every Dog (Act) Has Its Day – An Interview With Playwright Liz Duffy Adams