Austin Playhouse interviews the playwright of 

The Book of Will, Lauren Gunderson. 

We close our 19th Season with The Book of Will by Lauren Gunderson. The Book of Will tells the story of the determined community that begged, borrowed, and stole so that they could publish the true versions of Shakespeare's plays in the First Folio. 

Austin Playhouse was thrilled when Lauren Gunderson agreed to answer a few of our questions about The Book of Will. 

You may recognize Lauren Gunderson's name if you have visited Austin Playhouse recently. The Book of Will is the third Gunderson play Austin Playhouse has produced. Past productions include Silent Sky and Miss Bennet. Check out the interview below!

AP: The Book of Will is about the community that came together to print Shakespeare’s First Folio. How did you know that this would make a great story and why did you feel it was important to tell?

LG: This is a story less about Shakespeare and more about community. It's about friends, legacy, and what we can accomplish when we come together. It's also a love letter to theatre and how great storytelling can resurrect, inspire and bring people together. 

AP:The story of The Book of Will could feel like a history lesson, but you humanize these characters in a way that everybody can relate to. Why did you feel that was important and how did you begin that process?

LG: Shakespeare doesn't need much help being glorified, he needs help being humanized. I saw this play as a way of finding what is human and true and funny and awkward and lovely and hard about Shakespeare through his best friends.

AP: One of the things we love about your plays are the vivid, compelling female characters. How do you see their role in the world of The Book of Will?   

LG: I see everyone's role as supporting the group. The women are equal members of this group and join their tribe in doing something impossible.

AP: While doing research on this historical event, did you wish that you knew more about the real people in the story or were you pleased to be able to fill in storylines?

LG: So much! Come to the play and see!

AP: What do you hope the audience will take away from the story of The Book of Will?

LG: That life is short but the life of stories can be long lasting. By telling stories and watching stories we get to time travel, to reconnect and to life our best lives in conversation with art and the full human experience. 

AP: And our last question, do you have a favorite Shakespeare quote? If so, what is it?

LG: There are way too many to count. We read Sonnet 116 at our wedding which ends:

"Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me prov'd,

I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd."

The Book of Will runs May 31 - June 30 at Austin Playhouse at ACC Highland. Performances are Thursday - Saturday at 8pm, Sunday at 5pm. Call 512-476-0084 or online here. www.austinplayhouse.com

SUMMER AND BIRD From Page to Stage: An interview with Katherine Catmull

Austin Playhouse's Marie Fahlgren recently interviewed author/playwright Katherine Catmull about the process of adapting her young adult novel Summer and Bird for the Austin Playhouse stage. 

Katherine Catmull on the
Summer and Bird set.

Where did you find your inspiration to write Summer and Bird?

I was babysitting the two young daughters of friends of mine, and I wanted to make up a story to tell them that night. In the car on the way over it popped into my mind: two girls who looked like them, named Summer and Bird, whose parents had gone missing--a good babysitting tale! But they had already picked out books for that night. So when I got home I wrote down all I had thought of, the first page or so, and filed it away. A few years later when I decided to write a book, I was looking through old scribbles and found that one, and it grabbed me.

The girl Summer was based on recently graduated from college, by the way! And the younger one will graduate soon. Children move with terrifying swiftness!

Madi Palomo and Sarah Chong Harmer.

What challenges did you face when adapting the book Summer and Bird into the stage adaptation? 

That book is quite dense in many ways: dense language, dense with images, dense with ideas, dense with plot. It was my first book, you know, so I was like: HERE IS EVERYTHING I KNOW. It was also a bit melancholy, partly because it’s about family breakups, older-sister anguish, etc and partly I suspect because it was a sad period of my life (my mother had had Alzheimer’s for six years when I began it, and she died four years later, just before I finished my first draft—in the book, the Swan, this lovely white creature Summer can no longer communicate with, holds some of my feelings about all that).

But a one-hour play cannot be dense—it needs to be spare and bright and clear. It’s also a bit unfair to invite a bunch of young folk to a play and have it be relentlessly gloomy. It was actually Lara as she dramaturged my early drafts who helped me solve that one: she suggested I reconceive the Raven, who is a quiet, serious figure in the book. She said she imagined the Raven in a top hat and shiny suit, and that was all she had to say—I immediately got a vivid idea of this jokey trickster figure.

So basically the process of adapting was twofold: cut cut cut cut (I was so sad to lose Summer’s visit to the Green Home! and the patchwork bird!), nope, cut some more, nope, more than that; and brighten and lighten it up.

What did you enjoy the most while writing the adaptation of Summer and Bird?

That Raven was enormously fun to write! I love a snarky outsider who always has a rude remark to make. It’s almost the opposite of me: I’m a ridiculously earnest person who has more than once managed to ruin a joke setup by answering seriously: “Hm that’s interesting, I wonder why a priest a rabbi went would go to a bar together! Some sort of ecumenical effort, perhaps?” etc. But if I can write the Raven, I must have a snarky trickster in me somewhere.

Since you are also an actress, what was it like to have your writing world and theatre world combine? 

It’s the loveliest. I was an actor first, so collaborating with others and adjusting to their needs and taking notes—that’s all quite natural to me. It makes me feel supported rather than challenged, as it does for some playwrights. Writing is horribly LONELY. I also very much appreciate that hard deadline theater provides.

Madi Palomo, Sarah Chong Harmer,
and Jen Brown

What message do you hope young audience members will take away after seeing Summer and Bird?

Oh gosh, what a great question and I have no idea! Something about how families can be apart and yet together, I hope; something about how being a sibling is both the hardest thing and the best, most precious thing (it has been so in my life—I have five younger siblings). Also something about how we bring ourselves when we make meaning—we do “choose what things mean,” as Ben says, and we can choose differently if we like. Nothing important means only one thing.

When did you start writing? 

I wrote tons as a kid, and then as a teenager I got pretentious and anxious and stopped. Grad school in English lit did NOT make me any less pretentious and anxious, let me tell you, and it took a while for that to wear off. The first thing I wrote and finished (the finishing is key) as an adult was a FronteraFest monologue I wrote at the end of 2002 and performed  in 2003, called “Pizza Apostrophe” — a woman  calling to the pizza she has not ordered but still hopes will come. “O how could you not tell from the ache in my voice that I wanted extra cheese?” I was 42! Talk about a late re-start.

Is there anything else you would like young audience members to know about either you or the story of Summer and Bird? 

The main thing I would say—my second book, The Radiant Road, is actually about this—is don’t do what I did! Don’t get all shy and self-conscious about your beautiful makings, whether your making is writing or dancing or music or building robots or writing games or drawing or painting or WHATEVER. Whatever creative thing you do, please don’t stop. Keep going. We need your voice, we need you so badly. Keep going! And don’t forget to finish things, that’s EVERYTHING. 

Summer and Bird runs May 3 - 12 at Austin Playhouse. Friday and Saturday at 7:30pm,  Saturday and Sunday at 2pm. All student tickets are FREE! Adults are sliding scale: $7 - $28. 

Click here for tickets! www.austinplayhouse.com

Top 10 Reasons to Catch SUMMER AND BIRD

In 2012 local author Katherine Catmull published her fantasy novel Summer and Bird. The story takes readers on an adventure from Up (our world) to Down (the bird world). 

The story is navigated by two smart, strong, stubborn, loving, and brave sisters, Summer and Bird. It's a complete delight of a book, filled with achingly beautiful prose creating a new fantasy world that feels connected to a tradition of fairy tale storytelling, while being wholly and completely its own creation. And the story, of two girls whose family may be breaking up in spite of the love they share also felt very relevant and meaningful to children who might be in a similar, though possibly less fantastical, situation. 

All of which inspired AP's creative team to commission Katherine to adapt her novel to a stage play. 

We think there are tons of reasons to check out the world premiere of Summer and Bird, but we asked director Lara Toner Haddock to write up her top 10!

10. Because when you were little you longed for more adventure stories with strong, smart, real girls.

9. Because you know someone who needs to be introduced to the magic of theatre.

8. Because you believe in giving books a new life.  All the puppets are made from recycled hardbacks destined for the great library in the sky. Now they’ve been transformed into parrots, sparrows, owls, flocks of birds, and the cutest baby phoenix you’ve ever seen.

7. Because you’re obsessed with Game of Thrones, but it’s only on once a week and you need to see more awesome girls wielding sharp objects defending the realm.

6. Because you believe in supporting local art and local artists.

5. Because you don’t want to anger The Puppeteer. Seriously. Don’t make this lady mad. She eats birds.

4. Because your heart will grow three sizes watching Sarah Chong Harmer take care of a baby phoenix.

3. Because you’re doing it for the kids. Your ticket to a public performance subsidizes free tickets for elementary students.

2. Because you want to learn the bird language too (hint: Birdsong is a map!).

1. And the #1 reason to see Summer and Bird…. Because it’s a really wonderful story. And the world needs more of those.

Summer and Bird runs May 3 - 12 at Austin Playhouse.

Performances are Friday and Saturday at 7:30pm and Saturday and Sunday at 2pm

Box office: 512-476-0084 or online here.

www.austinplayhouse.com

Flooding at Austin Playhouse

Dear friends,

Saturday morning, our heroic Box Office Manager, arrived at the theatre to find an old sewage pipe left over from the Highland Mall days had broken its sealing cap and was spewing dirty water into the theatre. By the time ACC shut off the water it had already gotten backstage and some water had splashed onto the stage near where the pipe broke. The pipe was located above the off-stage right area, connected to ACC plumbing above the theatre.

 ACC immediately assigned an environmental safety team and had Blackman Mooring come in Saturday afternoon to start the clean up. They got all the accessible water out, cleaned the floors, removed the laminate flooring in the scene shop and the hallway by the restrooms, and installed industrial dehumidifiers throughout the theatre. We moved the bulk of the costumes to the front lobby so they'd be out of the way of the backstage cleanup.

On Monday, November 5, the team came back to do more testing and made the determination to remove affected parts of the stage, some sheetrock, and more flooring backstage. We all want to make sure that every bit of contaminant is removed. All this has meant we are unable to open The Mystery of Edwin Drood on November 16 as planned.

Right now there's a ton of activity in the space. Our entire backstage area is being packed up and moved into a storage pod so that the backstage tile floor and some affected drywall can be removed.

We are still dependent on a lot of moving pieces moving the way they should, but we also have to keep moving forward. We're planning to start public performances on Saturday, November 24. We look forward to seeing you at the theatre!

The Inspiration Behind our Festival-Winning Plays

In 2017 for our first new play festival we received almost 800 submissions. It was an overwhelming response to kick off a brand new event. For the second year of the festival we limited submissions to Texas playwrights. This new focus creates opportunities to work more closely with the playwrights and support the creation of these amazing new local plays. We're thrilled to present Austin audiences with staged readings of these three winning plays! We spoke with the playwrights about the inspiration for their plays. Join us April 27 -29 for the festival!

Reina Hardy, playwright of Eidophusikon
Staged reading Friday, April 27, 8pm

The Eidophusikon is a real thing! Philip James de Loutherberg was a real person! He created the Eidophusikon because he wanted to create lighting effects that weren't yet possible on a full-sized stage. I was very interested in his project of aesthetic rapture and transport. I became obsessed with it for two reasons: (1) No one knows how he did it. There are these glowing contemporary reviews, but the machine is long destroyed and no one has ever found the plans. (2) The Eidophusikon was about the size of a decent flatscreen television. We have obviously outstripped De Loutherberg's ability to achieve his own goal of perfect verisimilitude inside a box. What continues to fascinate us about the Eidophusikon is its distance from verisimilitude; its toy-ness; its tackiness. All of this is to say, when I first came to Austin I shopped a lot at a store called Texas Thrift. The store (where I bought ceramic unicorns and 80s pointy-toed shoes, and yes, souvenir prom glasses) somehow got connected in my mind with the Eidophusikon - a thing which is lost, dead, broken, trashy, out-of-date by centuries and yet still very important somehow.

C. Denby Swanson, playwright of Nutshell
Staged reading Saturday, April 28, 8pm

Nutshell is about the life of Frances Glessner Lee, a Chicago heiress born in 1878 who built the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, a series of exquisitely precise 1 inch to 1 foot-scaled miniatures of crime scenes. She created them for Harvard University, where she had endowed the Department of Legal Medicine, as a way to train detectives how to investigate homicides. Eventually, the Nutshells wound up at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore, Maryland, where my friend and director Elissa Goetschius saw them. She posted an article on Facebook, which another friend made sure I saw, and I was immediately entranced. I knew there was a science play in there. And a play about women’s forgotten history. And a play that invited theatricality. Then in 2016 I received a commission to write a play from Ensemble Studio Theater / Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science & Technology Project.

Lisa B. Thompson, playwright of Monroe
Staged reading Sunday, April 29, 7pm

Monroe is inspired by my family. As a child I was fascinated about them moving from Louisiana to California during the Great Migration. My father is from Lake Charles and my mother is from Monroe (hence the play’s title). I was curious about their decision to leave the south for the west coast instead of relocating to a northeastern city or the midwest like the majority of African Americans during that period. The drama is also inspired by a conversation between my parents about a lynching down south. During breakfast one Sunday morning my eight year old self was captivated by their serious yet matter of fact tones. The details of the story evade me but the tenor of it remains. A bit of my innocence died on that morning. Recalling that conversation makes me think of all the black children around breakfast tables now who are overhearing their parents discuss the repeated killings of unarmed African Americans by the police. In time we will see what their imaginations produce to cope with their loss of innocence.

Austin Playhouse Festival of New Texas Plays
April 27 - 29, 2018
Austin Playhouse at ACC Highland
512-476-0084
www.austinplayhouse.com

 

Keep writing, Austin: Cyndi Williams reflects on our first Festival of New American Plays

Stephen Mercantel, Jess Hughes and
Andrew Osborn Ginder in rehearsal for
Sarah Salwick's Low Hanging Stars

In the 1980's, not too many people in Austin wrote plays. Or maybe lots of people wrote scripts and tucked them into the back of their sock drawer, because Austin didn't have many development or production opportunities for playwrights at the time. For years I only knew one playwright, Marty Martin, who wrote wonderful historic dramas. The first time I was nominated for an award for a new play script, only two other original scripts were nominated. Randall Wheatley won for his very funny radio station comedy Billy's Last Broadcast, and he stood in front of the theater community and said this...

"If Austin wants a national profile as a theater city, it doesn't matter how many amazing new interpretations of Hamlet we present... it matters how many original plays we produce."

Not to slag Shakespeare, but a living theater calls for living playwrights. 

In the late 90's, ScriptWorks, a service organization for playwrights, was founded by David Mark Cohen, along with a small band of playwrights, including me. (Carson Kreitzer, the writer of Capitol Crime! is a Core Alum of ScriptWorks, and Sarah Saltwick is a current member who happens to also have a script in ScriptWork's Out of Ink Festival this weekend!). 

Director Cyndi Williams &
Playwright Sarah Saltwick in
rehearsal for Low Hanging Stars

By the early 2000's, I heard this figure: fully one out of three plays produced in this city was an original script. 

But Austin's more recent economic upturn has its downsides (traffic, anyone?) and one of those downsides has been the loss of affordable theater space. In the last few months alone, we have lost Salvage Vanguard's theater on Manor Road, and the Off Center, run for many years by the Rude Mechs. Both of these companies produce and promote new work, and have national profiles... but they don't have theater spaces in Austin, Texas, anymore.  

I am so proud of Austin Playhouse for stepping up with our first festival of New American Plays.  We had over 700 entries, and we read quite a few excellent scripts, including the lovely ghost story, Low Hanging Stars by Austin's own Sarah Saltwick. 

Keep writing, Austin.

For tickets and more information on Austin Playhouse's Festival of New American Plays, click here! Admission is Free. If you would like to pick a price for your ticket it will support the actor salaries, playwright awards, and production expenses for the New Play Festival!

Interview with Silent Sky Playwright Lauren Gunderson

This week, we're gearing up to open Silent Sky, a magical and inspiring play that tells the story of astronomer Henrietta Leavitt who transcended her post as a real-life Harvard "computer" to make a revolutionary discovery about the universe. We were also lucky enough to have an opportunity to interview playwright Lauren Gunderson about her brilliant play. 

Read on and then join us at Silent Sky, running September 23 - October 16. For tickets and more information, click here!

Although this play wasn't written that long ago, do you think this play has a new message for today's audiences? 

We are still in the unfortunate rut of under-opportunity and under-representation for women in the sciences and tech (and Hollywood, and politics and on and on and on). This play aims to expose and challenge that angering trend with a true story of a woman who changed the course of astronomy and (to the extent that astronomy defines us as a civilization) human life. And she did it in a room with several other brilliant but underpaid, sequestered, unappreciated woman mathematicians that were not allowed to even use the telescopes that the men could. That sends a message across time to us to say that women aren't asking for special treatment, we are showing how special we already are and always have been. We're not asking anyone to let us participate, we are exclaiming that we have participated in discoveries, breakthroughs and wild achievement all along (despite being excluded, barred and presumed incapable). I also intend for the play to show more than one kind of heroine. Women characters are often (even if they are the play's protagonist) surrounded by men. This play reverses that making the male character the rarity. This creates a diverse sisterhood that will give every audience member (male or female) someone to root for. 

Do you have any rules for your plays?  

I do tend to follow Paula Vogel dictum to include one impossible thing in every play. This generally leads to some exciting theatricality. I also start with an image in my mind for the end of the play and write toward that end. I don't really know a play is worth writing until I get a sense of it's resolution. 

Did you find the lack of personal information on the real Henrietta frustrating or liberating?

Liberating! I tried to honor her spirit even if every detail isn't biographically confirmed. The science is accurate as is the history of her various discoveries and publications. And I think that's what she would care most about. I took details that were particularly beautiful or ironic or inspiring and included them faithfully. She did travel on a ocean liner to Europe. She did insist on being identified as an astronomer on her final census. She discovered thousands of cepheid stars from that wallpapered Harvard attic. A member of the Nobel committee did call her for a prize. Before the premiere of the play a few years ago I went to her grave in Cambridge to say thank you for not haunting me for making up parts of her life. So far she has kept to that arrangement. :)

In our research, Henrietta's siblings were seldom mentioned. What inspired you to give her a close companion in a sister? 

I wanted to write about women not just one woman. And I thought the contrast between the life that Henrietta, Annie and Will chose and the life of most women of the time would best be juxtaposed in a sister for Henrietta. That way they are in the exact same generation but choosing very different lifestyles. In reality it was Henrietta's mother who was her companion and even moved to Boston to be with her until she died. Also I have a sister and felt that it was about time I wrote about her a bit, too.

In Silent Sky, it is intimated that Will and Annie have a romantic relationship. Is this fiction based? 

Mostly yes. But the women that worked there tended to go unmarried (Annie was and Will never married after her horrible husband left her when she was young). I also borrowed from the concept of a "Boston Marriage" (the play is set near Boston after all), which at that time meant a loving sometimes romantic relationship between two women who spent their lives together.  

What question do you wish you were asked about Silent Sky? 

About the music. I knew this play could be a play as opposed to a short story or blog post because the mathematics of her stars contain music: pattern, volume, rhythm. It quickly became a way to dramatize an idea, to theatricalize her science. The music is another way to connect science to art. More on that here: http://silentskyplay.tumblr.com/post/74392089598/not-with-numbers-but-with-notes-math-music-on

If you had to write a play about a one of today's female scientists, who would it be? 

I write about a lot of women scientists (Ada Lovelace, Emilie du Chatelet) and find it better to write about science after a generation or two has time to digest what the discoveries become. It's hard to write fiction about today's science because we can't know what it means. Does it change the world or quickly become obsolete? So I tend to write about science history and trust that, as with any historical story, we apply its essential ideas and lessons to ourselves in the present. 

What research would you want audience members to do before seeing this show?

They needn't do any! Just come ready to have fun, learn a bit, and fall in love with these amazing, funny, passionate women and the stars they love.