Orlando Shakes: What themes or ideas are you focusing on with this play?

Robert Moulthrop: We’re all approaching death, every day, it’s just that the older one gets, the shorter the approach. I wanted to use this unspoken knowledge to create a family crucible in which three generations of women with a shared family history are forced to look at themselves and each other.

Orlando Shakes: What is the biggest challenge about crafting a new play?

Robert: Having faith that an ending will emerge, eventually.

Orlando Shakes: Who or what was your biggest inspiration for becoming a playwright?

Robert: Harold Pinter and Thornton Wilder. My graduate thesis was “Harold Pinter: The Poetic Effect of Theatricality.” I saw the Circle in the Square production of Wilder’s “Pullman Car Hiawatha” in my teens, and it stuck.

Orlando Shakes: If you could only describe your play using four words, what would they be?

Robert: Grandma’s moving. Everyone’s upset.

Orlando Shakes: What is unique about your writing process?

Robert: I usually take myself away to a nondescript hotel where there is nothing to do but write. But after a first draft, I do editing and re-writes pretty much anywhere. New York coffee shops and diners are the best. It’s all white noise until someone at the next table says something revealing without being aware of what they’ve said. Take notes. It might be a play (or a story).

Orlando Shakes: Aside from this play what is next for you?

Robert: I put a lot aside this past year while working on Jane. Now there are several stories and at least two plays waiting to be tended to, like planes circling the airport in the fog.

About Robert Moulthrop

Robert Moulthrop is a playwright and fiction writer. In 2016, Enchanted Lion Books published his 2017 ACLA Batchelder Award-winning translation of the critically acclaimed Danish children’s picture book Cry, Heart, But Never Break, by Glenn Ringtved and Charlotte Pardi. His plays have won awards for writing and performance at the New York International Fringe Festival, received festival production by The Gallery Players and NYU, and received developmental readings with the National New Play Network, Northern Stage, Orlando Shakes, New Jersey Repertory Company, Urban Stages Theatre, Abingdon Theatre Company, and Active Theatre. Robert’s short fiction has been published in journals and magazines including Tahoma Literary Review, Reed, Berkeley Fiction Review, Confrontation, and awarded prizes by Helen Magazine, Literal Latte and others. He has received a grant from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts for prose fiction. He lives and works in New York City. www.robertmoulthrop.com

Don’t miss Robert Moulthrop’s Jane Burgoyne at PlayFest presented by Harriett’s Charitable Trust.