You’ve read part one.  You clamored for another round!  What could be more fun that sitting in on a conversation between me and brilliant playwright Larry Kunofsky as we discuss the road that led to his upcoming production of Your Boyfriend May Be Imaginary?

Last time Larry explained how everyone has an imaginary component (in a way) … and he explained how his main character, Marci, spends a Saturday evening running from party to party in New York City looking for the man she’s dating — only to discover she possibly didn’t know him as well as she thought she did.  We also got into what lies at the heart of Larry’s writing. Good stuff!

Today we’re talking about how Larry and The Management came to partner up for Your Boyfriend May Be Imaginary,  Larry references Tolstoy AND Voltaire (in the same answer!) and gives us a little taste of what your dinner conversation will be like after you see his play.  So, grab your drink, settle in, and enjoy … Larry Kunofsky, Part 2:

Let’s talk for a minute about finding the right company to produce your work. Your Boyfriend May Be Imaginary is being produced by The Management. What are some of the great things about having another company produce your work as opposed to doing it through your own company, Purple Rep?

Well don’t get me wrong, I am committed to Purple Rep and have grown to love producing, even though I know that I’m not anywhere near the kind of producer that I want to become just yet. But having someone else produce my play – which is something that hasn’t happened in a while on my own home turf here in NYC – that ROCKS!

I feels so decadent! I can be Just The Playwright! I feel like a Roman Emperor! Where are the slave girls to dangle grapes over my gaping mouth?!

And if you knew The Management’s budget, you’d be laughing at me here, not with me (which you might have been doing already). This is not a decadent company. They are workers, and they have a guerrilla approach to doing more with less (in terms of budget, at least), and this is inspiring to me. When Purple Rep grows up, I want it to be just like The Management. But also different.

I have been Just The Playwright in the room at other times in my career and have felt a weird compulsion to get up and apologize for being there. But not with The Management. They were excited about me and by my work from the beginning, and their sincerity and warmth in making me feel welcome in their “home” has never wavered – just as the rigor of their talents has never seemed to diminish.

Purple Rep is still evolving (and is designed to have an ever-floating repertory of theatre artists on board), and everyone who takes part in a Purple Rep project is in our home because I opened the door and asked them to come in. With The Management, there was already a family in this home, and I’m the guest. But I love this family. I’m very familiar with Josh’s work as a playwright and with Megan Hill’s work as an actor. And to have them involved in the production of my play is deeply meaningful to me.

Working with The Management has allowed me to collaborate with director Meg Sturiano and to get to know her as an artist and human being. This has been among the very most satisfying aspects of this experience for me. Meg is an amazing director. Her process is so active, kinetic, muscular, and her approach and her spirit and her enthusiasm has been so nurturing and empowering.

But the whole family thing means more to me than the relief of not having to produce my play myself. Nicole & Josh Beerman just had a baby boy. And we looked at pictures during rehearsal the other day, and we were kvelling! Maybe I’ve been the curmudgeon-in-residence at other times in my life, but it has been so lovely to get to know this family and to be a guest in their home.

It seems that every off off Broadway production company I know of has some sort of mission statement that goes beyond “we do great plays” and fine tunes it down to: “We do plays centered on promoting XYZ” or “We produce plays that take place in a certain part of the world” or “a certain time in history” or “come from the perspective of X” As both a playwright – who looks to work with other companies – as well as someone who started his own production company, what are your thoughts about that? And did it make finding a company for Your Boyfriend May Be Imaginary easier or more difficult?

Well the second part of this question is easier to answer, so I’ll start there:

The Management was actively looking for new plays by other playwrights. The first show of The Management that I saw was MilkMilk Lemonade by company member Josh Conkel (of whom I’ve already proclaimed my love), but starting last year with Crystal Skillman (if I say I love her, too, does this make me seem like I love everybody? [a little bit ... yes] Because I don’t, but when I do love somebody, and/or their work, I shout it from the rooftops, and I really do love Crystal) [Well then that's just necessary, I would say ...], and her play CUT, The Management was clearly looking beyond Josh and his work.

But I didn’t approach them, they approached me. Actually, they approached me after they approached Adam Szymkowicz.

Well, that’s quite an honor!  Like being the one Brad Pitt chose after he chose Jennifer Aniston …  That makes you Angelina.

Adam Szymkowicz is one of the finest playwrights I know, whose work is always elegant, funny, inventive, and heartbreaking. He also has a blog on which he interviews playwrights – and this blog has become an amazing resource, and a way to validate lots of lesser-known playwrights, as well as a way of informing the public about the inner workings of some better-known playwrights, too.

He also happens to be among my very favorite people in the world. I was the Best Man at his wedding, a fact that I never tire of informing people about.

I think originally, The Management asked Adam if he’d send them one of his own plays, but somehow that didn’t work out (I think the dude has, like, FIVE off-Off Broadway plays lined up, which has got to be a record!), and then I think he suggested his wife, Kristen Palmer’s play The Heart In Your Chest, which I think The Management is strongly interested in, but it might have been too daunting for this season. And so then Adam suggested that they read Your Boyfriend May Be Imaginary.

I don’t think that The Management knew back then what a close friend I am to Adam, and so they figured, wow, this dude Adam’s interviewed hundreds of playwrights, and then he just throws the name Larry Kunofsky out there, so this dude Kunofsky must be the fanciest playwright in town.

I know that’s what I would think!

Which, of course, is hilarious, because I am so not fancy.

Well, a little bit.  Some times you’re a little bit fancy.  But I’m sorry … go on …

And so then, Meg Sturiano, Management company member and director-in-residence emailed me, asking for the script.

Now, I have a personal ethic about rapid response to all communications, both personal and professional. If you contact me, whoever you are, I will get back to you within a day, or I will commit Seppuku or something.

Damn, Larry.  That’s hardcore.

There must be something Calvinist hidden within my Modern Orthodox Jewish upbringing.

Oh, wait … you said “seppuku”.  I thought you said … ah … never-mind.  Keep going …

However, when Meg first wrote to me, I was in rehearsals for The Un-Marrying Project during the first season of Purple Rep. And I was trying to wear all these hats on my one head: playwright, Artistic Director, “Producer,” money-borrower, favor-caller-in-er, plumber, etc., that I actually took a couple days to get back to Meg, whom I hadn’t even met, and, really, this goes against the very core of my belief system, but Meg didn’t know that, so she must have figured, wow, this dude is so fancy that he doesn’t even want me to read his work, which is hilarious because I used to spend way too much time BEGGING for directors and producers to read my work.

So Meg wrote back in this really humble way, apologizing for asking to read my script again, but if the very notion wasn’t too offensive to me, it would be an honor for her just to hear back from me, or something like that. And then I was just too embarrassed about the whole thing to even acknowledge how I violated my own ethics in my rapid-responsibilities. So I just emailed her the play with, I think, no comment. Which probably made me seem even more aloof and remote.

I’m on the edge of my seat  … I can’t wait to hear what happens next!

But then Meg and the company read the script, and they actually liked it, and then they met me in person, and we hung out, and they realized that I wasn’t really a jerk, it just seemed that way via email. And then we started working together.

All of that is not to suggest that one should act like a jerk on purpose, because chances are, you will be successful at coming across as a jerk that way. I was just illustrating how, despite so many conflicting factors at play, it was the right place and the right time for me to collaborate with The Management.

Wow. That was just the answer to the second part. I haven’t even gotten to the first part. I may not be fancy, but I am verbose.

And, a bit hypnotic because at this point I’m not sure I remember my question.  I think it was about how every company has a fine-tuned mission statement and how does that affect you submitting your work to other companies.  But that was just a jumping off point.  Get around to it when it makes sense to.

I’m actually very bad at submitting my work to other companies, because I’ve been writing plays for a long time and it seems that the only way to get your work seen by the right people is when they come looking for you.

The problem with this philosophy is that this particular instance is the ONLY time this has ever worked out for me.

So I’ve got to get better at submitting my work to other companies. Both as an individual playwright with a bunch of unproduced plays, and as the Artistic Director of a (VERY!) small theatre company with a tiny budget (picture me walking around clothed only in a barrel held up by suspenders, because that’s my new look for next year) that is eager to co-produce with other individual artists and producing entities, my need to collaborate more with as many other theatre companies and theatre artists as possible is essential for me to remain even a blip near the radar screen.

The Off-Off Broadway scene is really, really happening right now. There are a lot of companies doing really, really fine work. I love Flux Theatre Ensemble and The Amoralists, and Nosedive, and Packawallop, and Boomerang, and Blue Coyote, and Rising Phoenix Rep, and whatever’s happening at The Brick is always exciting, to name just the companies I didn’t have to spend even one second thinking about.

When I look back at the last sentence I just wrote, I don’t really think about the “sensibility” or the “aesthetics” of these companies, I think about how I love the plays that these people produce, the playwrights, actors, directors, designers who tend to work with these companies, and basically, I like the people who work at these companies. I dig them as people. I grok them, if you will. (I use that word in a lot of my plays. Look it up. Seriously.)

I’ll do you one better:

I think that’s really what it’s about. And yet, these companies do have a very specific sensibility and aesthetic, and my own company, Purple Rep, most emphatically does, too!

But it’s important to remember that when I become interested in a theatre company (and I think this is true for most people), it’s rare that I care first and foremost about their mission statement. If I like the plays that the company produces (and they have to produce, not just develop! Because institutionalized Play Development is the NINTH CIRCLE OF HELL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), and I like the people involved, then I’m interested. But it’s good when a company has a very clear mission. It makes them look like they know what they’re talking about.

There’s another lovely tension between the idea that everyone working consistently Off-Off Broadway is part of (in a sense) one company, and the fact that, as it appears on the surface, different companies do different things. Another way of saying this is: the Off-Off Broadway community (in which I am deeply honored and proud to participate) is often just a bunch of tiny communities. And other times, it really is one community. And that tension gives us balance; it’s a good thing that both things are true. Sometimes the tiny company- or project-based communities are like ghettos, but their separate-ness brings diversity and richness to what we do. So sometimes I’ll work in my little Purple Rep shtetl or visit the ‘hood around the corner. As an Artistic Director, I aim towards a fidelity to the ideals on which my company was founded, but as a playwright, I have a more promiscuous attitude – I want to crawl into bed with all kinds of companies. Please Note: This last bit is a metaphor. I don’t want theatre companies considering my work to think that sleeping with me is a requirement.

Noted.

Karen, do you think anyone is still reading this at this point?

Well, I am.  You are.  Presumably Adam Szymkowicz stuck around.

I mean, it was a great question, but the answer makes War And Peace look like a novella. But to paraphrase Voltaire, I didn’t have time to give you a short answer, so I only gave you a long answer.

Look at me.

It’s come to this now.

I’m the guy who goes around paraphrasing Voltaire.

Sometimes I worry about myself.

Back to your play. I’m going to give you a scenario. A group of friends go to see your play and then go out to dinner afterwards. What do you think they will find the most interesting part of the play to chew on over dinner? What will be that one point that they all either have varying opinions on, or the one part that (hopefully) gives them the most to think about?

Well I like to personally attend all the performances (or as many as possible) of my plays in production, so since I’ll be there, I think that this group will no doubt speak, to some degree, about my play, at least at first, but then they will no doubt spend the rest of their evening remarking upon how strikingly handsome I am. Sure, the guy’s talented, I can hear them saying, but damn, he’s SO GOOD LOOKING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Can we see that picture again?

Oh wait, does this imaginary scenario take place in something similar to reality?  Well, I wasn’t specific, but let’s go with “yes”. If so, I feel that I should revise my answer.  Not necessary, but I won’t be the one to stop you.

Honestly, I think that this is the PERFECT question for this play in particular.  Thank you.

There’s no intermission in this play, so it’s technically a full-length one-act, but there are two very separate parts of the play, both with distinct energies. It starts out pretty manic and antic and frenzied and kooky and almost dreamlike and surreal, and surreal in a way that feels almost hyper-real, and then it gets MORE manic and MORE antic and MORE frenzied and MORE kooky (or kookier) and MORE dreamlike and surreal and hyper-real, but then… after all of that… it shifts gears.

As the play winds down (after it gets to a point where you think it might run off the rails), as the play begins to prepare you to usher yourselves out into the night, the play becomes quieter and slower and softer of tone and spirit and more wistful and more somber, but also still funny, but funny in a whole different way.

And this new and different energy that the play finds in itself becomes almost like a whole second act, or perhaps even a whole other play entirely.

And I think that’s what people will be talking about later that evening. That transformation. And how… transformative…. It was. I really do!

How the play was one thing, and how it reached a fever pitch of that one thing, and how it then became another thing altogether. And how those energies affected them, these imaginary friends of yours, and, one hopes, the actual audience, as well.

Maybe some people won’t dig it, that shift. But I bet some people will. And perhaps some people will greatly prefer one of these two energies to the other. But I bet some people might connect deeply to the way that the energy went one way and then went another way. Maybe this evening of theatre and its shifting energy will remind people of the day they just had. Because some days are like that. And personally, any day when I see a play that has its own distinct energy, it changes the rhythm of my whole day. I know that theatre – really great theatre – can change your life. My simple hope is that my play will just change your day. In a good way, of course. And I want to say one more time that, yes, this is what I truly expect people to be talking about after they’ve seen my play.

But all my plays are about intimacy and tenderness and the need to connect, and how DIFFICULT all these things can be, and so if all I do with my life is to help generate the conversation of strangers towards these themes, then, despite what my teachers predicted, I won’t have been a complete and total screw-up.

Bonus Question! (but mandatory). You can answer this last one any way you want – it’s free form! Leave me with some last thoughts about the play, tell me a joke, give me a recipe, create a haiku, promote your favorite cause … tell me the best purchase you ever made. Really, the sky is the LIMIT! Anything that you feel like sharing - GO!

I’ll just say one more thing:

The last time I saw you, you told me that I was your favorite playwright.

I stopped you, and said, REALLY?! (Because I had to double-check. We had both been drinking.)

And you said, yes, you, Larry Kunofsky, are my favorite playwright.

And I responded to that by saying, I bet you say that to all the playwrights! But I think that was my way of being un-ready to handle the compliment you were giving me.

So I have a follow-up question that I will both ask of you and then answer for you:

Question: Do you know what that means to me?!

Answer: Everything. It means everything to me.

_______________

Well, the conversation doesn’t end there, but the interview does, my lovelies!  So — now that this 2 part interview has stimulated your brain and given you all sorts of breadcrumbs about Your Boyfriend May Be Imaginary don’t forget to mark your calendars and buy your tickets now.  And be sure to stop back and read the review!

~~~

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Related Posts:

• Your Boyfriend May Be Imaginary – A Epic Quest Through Another Hundred People
• Larry Kunofsky – Unimaginably Imaginative. But NOT Imaginary – Take 1
• A Play Takes Flight – The Making Of “Caitlin And The Swan”
• The Myths We Need -Or- How To Begin: The Play You Need To See
• The Un-Marrying Project: Passion Is Easy – Commitment Is Hard

You may think my life is all about going to shows, sitting in the dark, absorbing — going back home … writing reviews.  It is NOT.  My life is about highlighting, showcasing and celebrating the talented people of the independent entertainment world that I am lucky enough to experience.   I only know how to do that one way: by knowing their work first, and then – if it works out – by meeting them for interviews, then seeing them socially … then interviewing them again.  It helps when I can know the artist from the inside out – Know Them: Know Their Work.  In turn: Know Their Work … Understand How To Distill It To An Audience.  Voila - suddenly it’s all second nature.

Larry Kunofsky and I started out like any playwright/reviewer.  But we soon learned that we had a lot to say to each other. A LOT.  Larry is many things: a playwright, a thinker, a brilliant man.  He’s as much an interviewer as an interviewee, and that’s what makes for a good give and take.  In a few weeks The Management Theater Company will be doing his play Your Boyfriend May Be Imaginary. I had a lot to ask him.  He had a lot to tell me.  As a result I ended up with a two parter – and so did you, lucky reader.  So, grab a drink and get ready to find out why New York City on a Saturday Night can be like falling down the rabbit hole, read why every relationship has an imaginary component to it,  and, if Feist gets mentioned, play some of her music as you read. That’s what the link is for.

Love the title: Your Boyfriend May Be Imaginary.

Larry Kunofsky: Thanks, Karen. I won’t deny it, some of my titles are pretty nifty. I’ll let people like you speak to the merits of the plays themselves, but I hope that you and your readers will indulge me my little self-back-patting when it comes to Title-Pride.

If a play is sex, then a good title is foreplay. And if giving good foreplay is my legacy, I’ll accept my lot in life.

And we’re off!

Truthfully, Larry – How many imaginary boyfriends do you think are floating around out there? I bet in New York alone there are THOUSANDS. What’s your ballpark figure?

LK: I’ve never met any adult who has admitted to having an imaginary boyfriend or girlfriend. I think there are probably scores of undocumented cases of such things, but how would we quantify this? It’s kind of like trying to find out how many people cheat on their taxes.

Wait. Just got an idea for a play. An Internal Emotional Revenue Service that documents the love that we feel for others. A society in which intimacy is taxed. And your imaginary boyfriends need to be declared. That could be the next play… written by somebody else. That’s a terrible idea!

Frankly, I’ve heard worse.

LK: Your Boyfriend May Be Imaginary is not really about imaginary people. And in general, I’m much more interested in how we imagine our actual partners to be. Y’know what I mean?

No.  Tell me more.

LK: Whenever friends talk to me about their partners, it always feels so intimate, since I will never see their partners the way that they do. And perhaps we never really know how our significant others talk about us, so we ourselves are always alien to the imaginary versions of us. And then – not that I’m conducting any kind of social experiment here, but it is something that I notice a lot – I find myself comparing my firsthand knowledge of the boyfriend or girlfriend or Otherfriend in question to the version of this same person as described to me by their partners. This can often create a fascinating disconnect.

I think that even the most aware and truthful and pragmatic of lovers can’t help but impose their own meaning of their partners onto their actual partners. So, in essence, all our boyfriends and girlfriends and friends in general are imaginary, because we sometimes see the idealized version of them, and sometimes (maybe when we’re cranky and having arguments in the middle of the street; although I’ve never been party to such base behavior) we see our partners in the most hypercritical and uncomplimentary ways.

But the key to any adult relationship is getting to know the other person beyond our own perspective. It’s a yin-and-yang thing. You need to split the difference between how you see the one you love and how the one you love sees her-/himself. To love and to be loved in any meaningful way involves factoring in all these versions of one another and striving towards our most truthful selves.

I think I was putting something together there, but it all fell apart like Jenga. My brain just slapped me in the face.

No no … it stuck.  Not every Jenga brick fell to the ground. Okay.  So, theoretically, everyone is imaginary when they’re being thought of more highly than they are, or demonized somehow … the real person is somewhere in the middle of the huge pendulum swing.  I  got it.

So then, what’s going on here then? What makes everyone suspicious that this boyfriend may be imaginary? Tell me a little bit about this play and what made you write it.

LK: Ah, now I can just plug the bejeebus out of this play!

Great!

You’re Welcome, The Management!

Thanks, Karen – you’re good.

Okay.

“It’s a busy, happening Saturday night in the Big City, and everyone we know is having a party in their apartment. Apartments! Parties! People! Music! Dancing! Cell Phones! Flashbulbs! Making Out! Longing.”

Those are the opening stage directions for the script of Your Boyfriend May Be Imaginary.

We’re following Marci, a woman of good character but of low standing in the society and mini-societies within this play, as she goes from party after party looking for her missing boyfriend, or at the very least, some information that would lead her to find her boyfriend.

It’s kind of like Alice in Wonderland, if Alice were an adult, had a boyfriend, couldn’t find him, and jumped into the Rabbit Hole that is all the parties that people are having in the Big City on a happening Saturday night.

I love that.

LK: Everyone Marci encounters apologizes to her for being so busy and so out of touch. At first it seems that Marci has failed to connect with the other people in her life, but along her search, we see that everyone around her is failing and failing again to connect with anyone and everyone.

And the more Marci enquires into the whereabouts of this boyfriend that no one has ever met, the more people suspect that Marci doesn’t really have a boyfriend.

And so not only does Marci need to find her boyfriend, she has to find someone who believes her, or believes in her. And the more “clues” that she discovers about her missing boyfriend, the more Marci realizes that she’s not only looking for where her boyfriend is, but also, and even more importantly, who her boyfriend is. And these questions make her wonder who she, herself is, and where she is right now, within her own life.

It’s funny.

It’s sad.

It has mysteries and discoveries.

It has love between boyfriends and girlfriends, and it also has love within relationships that we don’t even have names for yet.

That’s Your Boyfriend May Be Imaginary.

Thank you for asking.

Really.

I’m so proud of The Management and the phenomenal ensemble for this production.

When I hear “your boyfriend may be imaginary” to me, that’s a very different subtext than “You’re lying! You don’t have a boyfriend!” It’s actually very gentle, cautious … like you’re approaching the person with a comfy blanket and some cocoa, hoping not to disturb the fantasy. Am I wrong? Are the people in this play warm, fuzzy blanket people trying to help, or are they those buzz kills just trying to be balloon poppers?

LK: This question speaks so much to my philosophy on how to be a real friend.

My mother always used to say, whenever anyone screwed up or said or did something stupid: “They mean well.” And the older I get, the more I do appreciate good intentions, and I really do see her point as deeply compassionate and forgiving.

But I also can’t deny that I find the well intentioned among us to be somewhat oppressive when they try to help us in the way they think we need to be helped (or loved, or treated in general), rather than in the way that we want them or need them to. It’s like asking someone for the time, and they give you instructions on how to build a watch.

Ha!

LK: So this is a play about someone who needs something very specific from people, but who is mostly given the other person’s version of what they think she needs, rather than what she’s asking for.

And Marci, our heroine, seems to have a long history of not getting what she really needs from people. But since she needs to find her boyfriend, she forces herself to ask others for help. The fact that most people in Marci’s life don’t help her is (I think) among the funniest and most poignant aspects of the play, but the ultimate challenge for Marci is to allow others to help her in their way until she can find someone who can help her in her way. And I think that’s a challenge for all of us. Often what people give us is not really what we need from them, but it helps if you accept what people give you, just the same. At least some of the time. Because, like my mom says, “they mean well.”

There’s a song on Feist’s latest album that goes “When you comfort me / It doesn’t bring me comfort, actually.”

And I suspect that the subtext of this song is that the First Person Narrator is missing out on something profound.

My theory is that this person (and I somehow cannot accept that Feist is singing about herself here. I’m not entirely sure why, but I have a lot of strong feelings about Feist in general, so bear with me) refuses to face the challenge of being comforted.

Perhaps how we expect or want to be comforted is too complacent, and we have to get past an outmoded comfort zone in order to find true comfort.

Isn’t that a fascinating paradox?  (It is.) Do you have Feist’s email address? (I don’t.) She needs to know about this right away!   (Maybe she’s reading this …? Possibly? We have a lot of readers !)

The main characters in my plays are usually so put-upon in their struggles for basic kindness, intimacy, understanding, that this struggle (which I admit, seems on the surface to be common and ordinary) is, in itself, heroic.

It’s my way of turning the mundane into an Epic Quest. Because I always find the struggles of someone as seemingly ordinary as Marci in her search for her boyfriend to be far more compelling than someone like Sir Galahad searching for the Holy Grail. That’s just how I’m wired.

By the end of the play (Spoiler Alert: This is NOT a Spoiler!) Marci finds someone she can help and from whom she learns to accept help and comfort and intimacy and companionship in return.

Wow, that sounds really nice!

I was going to say that Larry.  So I will: That sounds really nice!

LK: Not all of my plays have happy endings.

This play has a lot of happiness in it. But I think people will cry at the end.

Maybe that makes me sound like I think I’m All-That-and-a-bag-of-chips (as if! Wait, who am I right now? I don’t really talk like this!), (You don’t.  But you’re on a roll. ) but when I see the lovely actors in this powerful ensemble really BRINGING IT in rehearsals, I get a little verklempt myself.

So bring a hankie to Under St. Marks.

But the good thing is, it’s a Happy Cry.

And sometimes we all need a good Happy Cry.

Sometimes?  I need a good Happy Cry every other Thursday.  So, looks like I can put away my Barry Manilow Somewhere Down The Road 45 the week I’m going to see your show.

Okay.  Moving on.

I’ve seen 2 of your plays so far: The Myths We Need – or – How To Begin and The Un-Marrying Project. On the surface both those plays were acres away from each other in terms of theme, but at the heart of it the pulse that drew the audience in was the 1:1 relationship between two people be it man and woman, man and man or woman and woman. So, would you say that Your Boyfriend May Be Imaginary is similar?

Meaning – probably looks and feels different from your other works but has the same heart?

LK: This question makes me reflect deeply on the past year, Karen.

I haven’t known you all that long (even though we’ve become fast friends; a phenomenon that should happen more often between playwrights and reviewers! I mean, it’s one thing to give your friend’s work a good review, but it’s another to become good friends with someone whose work you respect and admire. And on the other end of that equation, it’s easy for me to let you in on my creative process, because I actually like talking to you and hanging out with you), but Boyfriend will be the third play of mine produced in NYC within a single year.

That’s very rare. I’m not sure I’ll be so privileged again anytime soon.

This fills me with both pride and humility.

I have some anxiety about the future of Purple Rep, my theatre company, and I also have some anxiety about finding more opportunities for myself as a playwright beyond my own company (and beyond New York City, for that matter).

But ultimately, when you’ve collaborated with the kind of talented people I’ve worked with this past year, you get really hungry for that kind of work and for those kinds of working relationships.

It freaks me out a little (not knowing where my next creative “meal” is coming from), but it also helps me focus on working for what I know will feed me, creatively – keeps my head in the game.

Maybe that was a bit of a tangent, but it was worth reflecting upon.

These three plays are a good cross-section of the kind of work that I do as a playwright.

The Un-Marrying Project plays with form (is it a film or a play or a film-within-a-play?) and is among the most politically engaged of my plays (it deals with the fight for Marriage Equality. And now it’s a “period piece,” at least in New York, but I feel that this play continues to be relevant in the questions it asks about political activism itself (particularly now, in the age of the Occupy movement), as well as the questions that the play asks of us beyond politics, as in: What does it mean to be together with someone? What does it mean to separate from someone you’ve been with for a long time? When the obstacles against connection with others are external, how does this change our internal harmony with others? And what happens when we do get what we want, politically, artistically, romantically?

The Myths We Need – or – How To Begin plays with language. It’s written in something I like to call Ole Timey Talk. And it’s part of my cycle of biblical plays, The Genesis Tapestries, which dramatizes, reinterprets, and sometimes challenges themes from the Old Testament. The plays in this cycle might seem, on the surface, to be my least personal, since they take place in different times and places than where I am in my own life, but in many ways this long-term, ongoing project comprises my most personal work, in that I’m stretching the canvas, painting in broad strokes, and seeing how these ancient stories and themes reflect my own life, and vice versa.

Your Boyfriend May Be Imaginary might seem to be the most conventional of these three plays. It has some social satire in it, but it’s basically a character-driven comedy. It’s probably most similar to my play What To Do When You Hate All Your Friends – an anti-social comedy then any of my other work. (Both plays have a bunch of parties in them, and both plays deal with the weird hierarchies we place on our friendships, relationships, and social circles), but it does play with form (more on that later), and may not be political in any way, but does ask questions about how we as individuals interact within our community, and it does play with language, in that everyone speaks in this play in what I call Bi-Polar Speak, all run-on speech, and breathless syntactical (il)logic, but ultimately, all these plays are about how we love.

We all love. And we all love differently. And in many ways we all love badly. Or, at best, we don’t love enough, or we don’t love well enough. But there is hope that we can love better. That is, in essence, what I am always, always, always writing about.

That was the long answer to your question.

Here is the short answer:

Yes.

~~~

Can’t get enough of Larry Kunofsky?  Neither can I.  That was part 1.  Part 2 is coming up soon.  It’s just as funny, thoughtful, moving and minxy as this was.  So … grab another drink, stay tuned, and get ready for more of the same (but completely different)!

_________________________________________________________________________

Related Posts:

• Larry Kunofsky Take 2 … Still Imaginative – Nowhere Near Imaginary
• The Myths We Need -Or- How To Begin: The Play You Need To See
• The Un-Marrying Project: Passion Is Easy – Commitment Is Hard
• The Team Behind “Gay Plays For Straight People (And Also Gay People)” Gives Me Some Straight Answers (And Also Some Gay Answers)
• Your Boyfriend May Be Imaginary – A Epic Quest Through Another Hundred People

Linda Evangelista is the source of the oft-quoted line “I won’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day.” I’ve often paraphrased and said that I won’t get out of bed before six a.m. unless a number like that is mentioned. Yeah, well … how about a number like over 5 million?

Let me explain …

Regular readers of The Happiest Medium know that UNDER St. Marks Theater is one of the theatres that I return to time and time again.  It’s where I first laid eyes on Killy Dwyer and Kill The Band, it’s where Alex Bond did her staged reading of Late Nights With The Boys, it’s where Penny Pollak holds Penny’s Open Mic and where Gigi LaFemme holds Revealed Burlesque. It’s where I saw Heidi Grumelot make a sock puppet into something much more in Donnie and the Monsters.  UNDER St. Marks is home to not only an army of downtown theatre artists but also to countless people who sit in the audience and shower them with love.  People like … me.

Well, this news had hardly hit the grapevine before all of downtown took it as a call to action — and very quickly Save UNDER St. Marks was formed.  Please join the group and throw your support behind this if you value all the precious gifts Horse Trade Theater Group has been able to funnel through this space.

So what does this have to do with getting up early?

Well, on Thursday, April 7 · 6:30am – 8:30am Save UNDER St. Marks is having a televised breakfast Event -

We want to invite you all to come out on Thursday morning at 6:45AM (yes AM) to join us in Showcasing the Horse Trade Talent at UNDER St Marks on NY1. Roger Clark will be there to interview us about UNDER St. Marks.

There will be two segments shot, one at 7am and the other around 8am, between the two segments we will run it open mic style with folks jumping up to do short 5 minute sets, the theme will be OWN IT.

We need a good turn out to show NYC that this is so important that even Artists are willing to get out of bed at 6AM and represent.

So if you can stay up all night and get there early — or if you can get out of bed, get yourself purty and look alive — please come join me at UNDER St. Marks on Thursday, April 7 · 6:30am – 8:30am.

Do it because there are moments when you need to join your voice with others in order to make a difference.  And this is one of those moments.

I’ll see you there.  Right?

~~~

More Info about UNDER St. Marks:

UNDER St. Marks is a downtown performance venue with a rich history. An experimental theatre space since the 1970’s, this 45-seat basement theater is now home to a wide variety of performance artists including The BTK Band, Penny’s Open Mic, Revealed Burlesque, Thank You Robot, Adam Wade, Tanya O’Debra, The Management, Little Lord, the Rising Sun Performance Company, No Tea Productions, Wide Eyed Productions, Animal Parts, Subjective Theatre Company, The Pumpkin Pie Show, and the FRIGID New York Festival.

Related Posts:

• It’s Time For Mini-Fridge Elevenses With Kill The Band – Mock Bottom Mockumental CD Release Experience!
• Mike Milazzo — Open Mike
• Women’s History Month: Celebrating Women In The Arts – Spotlight On Heidi Grumelot
• Following The Path Of Yoga
• 2nd Season Mini Fridge – Tasty, Filling And Leaving Audience Wanting More! (Jun 28, 2012 – Jul 04, 2012 )

Strange Bedfellows (photo by Moira Stone)

After interviewing Dorothy Fortenberry and Josh Conkel last week about  Caitlin and the Swan I was ready for anything.  A shocking comedy, a satirical poke at the female-friendship meme, a sly wink that came with a taboo nod, or perhaps even a mish-mash of Animal Farm, The Seagull, and Babe, Pig in the City.  What I wasn’t ready for was characters presented as a smart group of women, who were more Mary, Rhoda and Phyllis than Miranda, Carry and Samantha.  Gosh, can we all just admit that women have been gathering around bottles of wine and comparing things long before Sex and The City made bitching about men over cosmo/apple/flirt/tinis fashionable?  Since the dawn of the cork screw chicks have been meeting to compare their lives against each others, their own lives against what they’d envision, and most of all … to compare how far each gal is willing to go in the quest to have the perfect relationship.

Flirting with a topic that easily could have been badly handled and gone the way of, say, a Rob Schnieder vehicle, Caitlin and the Swan takes a dash of realism, a hint of mystery, a pinch of fantasy and swirls it around the audience in short scenes and snappy dialogue. Even as some of the more left-of-center scenes play out, there’s a serious grip on the underlying message … all things being equal, what will women put up with, shy away from, and submit to all in the name of love?

Twenty-something Caitlin (Marguerite French) and her pals, Priya (Shetal Shah) and Rachel (Teresa Stephenson) seem to have their lines drawn in very different places in the sand … a fact that greets the audience early on as Rachel admits that the new man in her life is  … a pig.  Rachel’s complete acceptance of where her heart sought to take her (and yes … to Rachel this is Her True Bliss) is tempered by Caitin’s confusion, shock, and somewhat-real-but-somewhat-feigned disgust.  It’s obvious that The Lady Doth Protest Too Much, for the minute Caitlin finds her own animal to admire, she’s fantasizing about being smothered in swan feathers faster than you can say Bjork’s Oscar Dress.

Brian Robert Burns as Doug, Caitlin’s confused (and sometimes whiny) boyfriend, is given just enough rope to hang himself with; after a night of his complaining I’d find myself more enthralled by the poetic beauty of a swan (elegantly portrayed by Elliott Reiland who doubles as Peter the Pig) too.  And honestly, Caitlin’s not all gone, there’s another forbidden longing presented to her in the form of  Bastian (Jake Aron) Caitlin’s young, earnest, sweet and unspoiled SAT student.  There are moments when one desire can be taken as a metaphor for the other … only the line is blurred … does Bastian represent the other-ness of the swan, or does the swan represent the freedom of Bastian?  Or maybe it’s a combination of the two?  All I’ll say is that by the time this play ends … you know exactly why that chemistry is there.

I wasn’t ready to like this play as much as I did … I wasn’t ready to identify with three women who are a great deal younger than I am and, really, a whole lot more open minded, at least when it comes to their heart’s desire. But under Josh Conkel’s directing this story was almost lyrical at times: poetically still one moment and uproariously disquieting the next.  He pushes the envelope just enough, while still making the atmosphere sufficiently comfortable  so that you can sink down into these lives and understand that some choices just aren’t up to us.  Regardless, they’re our choices to own.

Caitlin and the Swan runs till May 2 – Thursdays-Saturdays @ 8pm at UNDER St. Marks (94 St. Marks, btwn 1st Ave & Ave A.
Tickets are $18 and can be purchased at www.smarttix.com

Related Posts:

• A Play Takes Flight – The Making Of “Caitlin And The Swan”
• Larry Kunofsky Take 2 … Still Imaginative – Nowhere Near Imaginary
• Larry Kunofsky – Unimaginably Imaginative. But NOT Imaginary – Take 1
• Ye Elizabeths: Living Vicariously Because … (2012 Planet Connections Festivity)
• Early Risers / Night Owls … Come With Me – Help Save UNDER St. Marks

It was shocking, that first time in high school English class when my very Catholic, very quick-to-giggle sophomore class was taken through a reading of William Butler Yeats’ Leda and the Swan: A sudden blow: the great wings beating still // Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed // By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, // He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

Greek myth or not, there was something very evocative and real about it all, the idea of Leda being seduced by Zeus in feathered drag … it was a little naughty … a little worldly.  A little grown-up. I don’t think we ever understood why it was necessary for the all-powerful King of the Gods to take on the form of a bird in order to convince a woman to sleep with him, but regardless it left an impression on me, and apparently I wasn’t the only one; the myth obviously left an impression on Playwright Dorothy Fortenberry as well for when her writing teacher at the Yale School of Drama assigned her students to write a swan-themed play, Dorothy penned Caitlin and The Swan. The play that started its journey there now continues its voyage as it take wing at UNDER St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place between 1st and A) starting April 16th.

I got a chance to sit down with Dorothy, as well as with Director Joshua Conkel, to chat about how this production got started; what they both enjoy about collaborating on this girl-meets-bird story; and the skills needed to produce large-themed theatre in small spaces.

It all began on a Youngblood writing retreat in the Poconos, of all places, where Josh and Dorothy first met. Josh, who is also the co-artistic director of THE MANAGEMENT, asked Dorothy to submit her play to the group and everyone agreed that it was exactly they were looking to do …

Playwright Dorothy Fortenberry

KTL:  So you just submitted Caitlin and the Swan? There was no reading first, no workshopping of the piece?
DOROTHY: Well the time up in the Poconos was a bit of a workshop, so that by the time it was presented to THE MANAGEMENT it was already a polished reading.

KTL:  And Josh, you just picked up the play as is … does that happen very often?
JOSH: Vary rarely … almost never, I think it never happens. Usually you’ll start with “Here’s a staged reading” of a piece, but this was the right play at the right time.
DOROTHY: Usually you get some readings and people stall out, there’s a lot of rejection. But the group here was great …
JOSH: … Our audience has become like a community. They’ll go out for drinks with us, hang out with us …
DOROTHY: We did a fundraiser and everyone who was there really wanted to be there. It was so impressive to see people come out on a Wednesday night to raise money for this show …

KTL: So why the name “Caitlin”? Personally, to me it’s one of those names-of-the-moment, like every 4th grade class had 12 Caitlins and they were being called Caitlin R and Caitlin B for distinction … Is that why you chose Caitlin? Because it’s evocative of an every-girl?
DOROTHY: I think I chose Caitlin because it seemed so specifically of a moment — the character is in her late 20s, and I do think there was a wave of people naming their kids Caitlin from like 1978-1985. I certainly always had a bunch of them in my classroom, too. For me, Caitlin is very much a product of her time — she was born after the wave of ’70s feminists; she took women’s studies classes in college; and yet she ends up in a very gender-traditional relationship, without ever really actively choosing it. I think she is a kind of everywoman of my generation and I wanted her name to invoke that.
There are questions I’m grappling with: what does it mean to be a woman of this generation and of this time period? … We saw this over the summer with Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin .. we can do what we want but these old expectations still linger …
In the beginning of the play there are these three women who’ve been friends for a while. And now they’re exploring the concept of “Here’s who we thought we’d be … here’s who we are … What was the promise versus who are we now? Through everything else, mythical and magical, what is this legacy?
JOSH: As a director and a queer person I found it interesting that Caitlin and the Swan is a about gender; what men and women are supposed to be as opposed to what their biology forces them to be and what happens when it comes to a head.
DOROTHY: It’s funny that it got the big response it did from gay men. It is about gender and sexuality but there are also these subconscious layers … and I realized “Of course that’s what I’m writing about!”

KTL: That, and being an Animal LOVER as opposed to being a run-of-the-mill-PETA type Animal Lover …
DOROTHY: Yeah, I think the journey between animal loving and animal LOVING is what I’m trying to get at over the course of the whole play (so I don’t want to say too much up front). I will say that it’s less a play about animals and more a play about what’s taboo and forbidden and (as Josh put it) queer. I’m exploring what people want, what turns them on, and how rarely people actually pursue their desires. And the not always pretty consequences of what happens when they do. There’s a fierceness and a power to animals — they go after what they want ruthlessly — which I think people (and, in particular, women) have a lot of difficulty with. I wrote the play to poke holes in the Sex and the City model that women are always funny, they’re always having brunch. Nothing is safe.
JOSH: Of course it does one of these shame spirals (laughs) …
DOROTHY: I think there’s something really funny about watching people make mistakes …

KTL: Well you get the lesson and they get the consequences of the mistakes!
DOROTHY: There’s a sense that we live in NY so we’re fine with it all … and this play comes along and says “Really, well then what about this?”
JOSH: I think it takes different things and exposes tolerance levels. It’s a very queer play about straight marriage.

KTL:   The press release says this play explores the twisted links between pain and love. Ahhh … is there any other kind? But what drove you to explore a twisted side rather than a hearts and flowers side of this? I don’t have much to go on here yet but I get the feeling this isn’t a comedy. So what came first, the mood or the story line? As in … “I want to explore a girl’s dark secret … hmmmm” … or “I want to explore bestiality, would that be funny, strange, sad, tragic, twisted, gory, uncomfortable (physically – to her), uncomfortable (mentally – to her … to the audience … to her friends)”?
DOROTHY: Oh, I totally set out to write a comedy. It’s just a comedy about the intersection of pain and love. I think the myth came first. For me, the central dilemma of Leda and the Swan is “Did she want it?” There are so many depictions of this woman and this swan-god in art and in literature, and they all depict it differently – some paint it as pure violence, some as a tender relationship, some somewhere in the middle. I started with this question of Leda’s consent – did she ask for it? did she enjoy it? And the play – it’s darkness and it’s comedy – is my answer.

KTL:   Josh, this seems to be a pretty heavy topic that needs to be handled gently. Moreover, it’s a play written by a woman, about a woman … there’s a fine line between being a strong voice for the writer and a misogynist. How did you balance those two things?
JOSH: The play deals with frank subject matter like sexuality and gender roles, but is so flirty and fun in most of its story telling that I actually worry very little about its alienating anybody. The play takes a dark turn at the end, which I won’t give away here, but I hope it will catch people off guard after the rest of the play, which is so much fun. I expect to hear a lot of giggling. My experience is that everybody likes to talk about sex, but nobody wants to be the one to bring it up.
I did worry that my direction could seem misogynistic from time to time, because of course I have no earthly idea what it’s like being a woman. I have a leg up on other men though… the play, in addition to being about women, is a play about queerness, which I have twenty-eight years of experience with. I tried to approach the “otherness” of each character in terms of how they’re handling their problems with relationships and their societal roles, be they gender or otherwise. I found that was the best way to connect to them for me.

KTL:   By choosing this topic what do you hope the audience walks away with?
DOROTHY: I hope the audience has fun, I hope the audience gets scared, I hope the audience gets turned on, I hope the audience gets grossed out, and I kind of hope all these things happen at the same time.

Director Josh Conkel

KTL:  What are some things you watched out for, as a director, so that this play didn’t take an unintended turn? How do you get the audience on your side?
JOSH: The world of the play is somewhat heightened, but the trick is figuring out how heightened. If you go too far over the top, the audience isn’t along for the journey. If you don’t go far enough the play never comes to life. I find its best to create the form of the play first-the overall shape and tempo and style- because if you do it correctly, everything else has a way of falling into place. In terms of directing actors in heightened work, its a matter of convincing them to come to the world of the play and not pulling the world of the play to themselves. After all, you wouldn’t use the method to perform Moliere.

KTL:  What are your other plays like? Is there a theme you find yourself coming back to over and over?
DOROTHY: Hmmm, well, this is my only play about swans. So, that’s new! There are things about Caitlin and the Swan which are different from my other plays — it’s definitely got the frankest discussion of sexuality that I’ve written yet. However, even though the form and the subject matter is different, its attitude is in line with my other writing. I’m interested in poking holes in assumptions and tackling uncomfortable topics – through character, content, and theatricality. And I really mean uncomfortable topics, uncomfortable for people anywhere in the country of any persuasion. I wouldn’t define my work as “political theater” by any stretch but I do think there’s a politics of contrariness that I bring to my plays. My plays always come out of situations where I want to argue both sides of the coin. If there’s a question I can’t satisfactorily answer, probably I should write about it.

KTL:   Do you find that you write to inspire, to win people over, to shock, or do you just write whatever comes to mind?
DOROTHY: I write out of strong desire, unanswerable questions, unpredictable characters, and lots of Earl Grey tea. I certainly hope that people are inspired, won over, shocked, mad, aroused, tickled, and disoriented from their axes, but I can’t really control how an audience is going to respond. All I can try to do is tell the truth in my peculiar way, and hope other people want to come along for the ride.
JOSH: I started writing plays because I was an actor and there was no parts for me; then I became a director in order to do my own plays!

KTL:   Dorothy, Josh is a writer as well as a director … so on the flip side: would you ever, or have you ever, tried your hand at directing?
DOROTHY: Yes, I did direct, way back in the day … when I was at Yale I directed a new work that was written and performed by a student, it was a one man show. Watching other people direct reminds me how totally consuming it is — I would dream about it, thinking of what needed to be done, staging I wanted to block. When I’m writing, on the other hand, I go through my most consuming period before all the others are brought in … but when you’re directing, you go through it as your staging it.
JOSH: For me, it’s linked, I write like a director, I explain how it should be staged right in the script (laughs).

KTL:  So, having directed then, Dorothy, do you ever have the urge to re-direct something Josh is doing with the play?
DOROTHY: I feel like our conversations consist of “We wanna get to there? How?” We tend to be pretty on point.
JOSH: The difficulty is getting actors to go where they need to go. We have great actors, but generally actors don’t see the scope of the work, by definition.
DOROTHY: I’m very happy to leave the question of “how” to Josh, as long as we’re in tune on the “what“.

KTL:   UNDER St. Mark’s is a small space … were there any artistic changes you made based on the intimacy of the space that you would have done differently in say, the Shubert Theatre? Some people say that Urinetown suffered once it moved onto Broadway because it had more of a Fringe Festival feel and wasn’t intended to get so big. Of course, it did, and it was successful. So if something like that happened to Caitlin, without giving away too much of the plot, what would you change to make it play better in a bigger space?
JOSH: I could go on and on about this. I would love to have floating, revolving, amazing sets like a Broadway show! That said, UNDER St. Mark’s is one of the most charming spaces in Manhattan (I don’t care what anybody says) and has become a second home to us. Its smallness and overall quirkiness has been a big part of us build an audience of young down town folks, a lot of whom never go to the theater except to see our plays. It has a sexy, subversive feeling that lends itself to our work.

THE MANAGEMENT - Creators of Black & Blue Theater

KTL: Josh, you’re also the artistic director of The Management. The mission statement says:  The Management creates a haven for a community of artists and patrons to experience relevant, moving, unpretentious, aesthetically and financially accessible theater. We are known for our dark whimsy and critical exposés on American culture, while building rock-solid, visceral entertainment.
JOSH: In November a slim majority of Californians voted to remove an existing right of gay and lesbian couples. Just this week both Iowa and Vermont decided to allow same sex marriage. The Pope recently said in a speech that condom usage increased the spread of HIV. Bristol Palin had a baby out of wedlock and then came out in favor of preventative sex education. To get to the point, there’s always a war in this country between what is true about sexuality and gender and marriage and what is supposed to be true about such things but isn’t. I think this play lives in these dilemmas and explores them in a really thoughtful and funny way, without too many black and white answers.
DOROTHY: I think because Josh is a playwright he comes in knowing, “you worked on this and it was hard“, that’s what makes him a great director of new work, he never tries to start rewriting your play. That’s what makes The Management so successful. Everyone wears 4 hats and wears them well.
JOSH:   Well, you have to. I’ve read a statistic that most small production companies last less than one year. We’ve been around 5 years. And I think it’s because we’re more careful careful and precious about other’s writing.

KTL:   So, do you think you’ll do more collaborations together?
DOROTHY: I hope so! That would be fabulous!
JOSH: Definitely!

KTL: I look forward to seeing what comes out of this partnership in the future!  Thanks, Dorothy and Josh, for taking time to sit with me and give me the whole story.  I can’t wait to see the play!

Caitlin and The Swan will be running at UNDER St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place between 1st and A) April 16-May 2, Thursday through Saturday at 8pm. Tickets ($18) are available by calling Smarttix at 212-868-4444 or online at www.horseTRADE.info

Related Posts:

• “Caitlin and The Swan” Revisited
• Larry Kunofsky Take 2 … Still Imaginative – Nowhere Near Imaginary
• LIARS – Don’t Believe A Word Of It
• The Virilogy: A Drinking Game – Good To The Last Drop
• Larry Kunofsky – Unimaginably Imaginative. But NOT Imaginary – Take 1