Q: How did you get into playwriting?
A: I had just graduated film school in Chicago in the days when filmmaking was very, very expensive. I had no uncle in the business, no trust fund or credit cards to max out. But I was friends with a ton of frustrated auditioning actors who started or were affiliated with theater companies. I started writing plays. Then I was lucky enough to land a spot in the Rhinoceros Theater Festival in Chicago 20 years ago! Theatre was available to me, accessible, and full of possibility and potential.

Q: When you’re writing, what does an ideal day look like to you?
A: If I can get in a few solid uninterrupted hours over a series of consistent days to just sit and hammer away on the keys, I’m a happy camper. Writing is basically bricklaying.

Q: How do you define your creative process as a playwright?
A: I let an idea simmer and marinate for a while. I have about a 1,000 of them all at once, but the most insistent pushes their way to the front of the queue or opportunities arise, a theatre will want to commission me or there will be some festival related to the idea…its a pretty circuitous process. But once we are locked in and committed, it’s all about meeting that deadline and hammering it out. Then copious amounts of revision.

Q: What was your initial inspiration for writing What’s Best for the Children, and what fueled you throughout the writing process for your play?
A: I am a history nerd and very much interested in how things came to be. As someone who has been in and around educational spaces for years, I am always peeling back the layers to find out how we know what we know and according to who. The more I dug into the politics of the textbook industry, I was struck by the tragic absurdity of it all. I wanted to try and write a really funny and strange play.

Q: Tell us the first four words that come to mind to describe your play.
A: Hopefully it is funny.

Q: Why did you select those four words?
A: The majority of the 60-plus plays I have written — in my 20 years of doing so — have been humorous in some way, but I have never tried to write a start-to-finish comedy. So while it may seem overly simple, that’s really something I am so focused on. And trying to write comedy without an audience is excruciating. So this opportunity is big for me and will be so useful to my process.

Q: What playwrights have inspired your body of work? And why?
A: My first play was a tired rip off of True West by Sam Shepard, so I have to give him his props. But I learn from so many, like Luis Alfaro, Dominique Morriseau, Marcus Gardley, Universes, August WIlson, Lorraine Hansberry, Chuck Me, Sherry Kramer, Paula Vogel, Shakespeare, Robert Schenkkhan, Ntozake Shange…I could go on. I am drawn to stylists, and folks with distinct points of view and high levels of craft.

Q: Who are some current playwrights you would recommend to those interested in new plays?
A: By current, do you mean living? I think the key is to find the connections between the old and the new, the living and the dead. I would recommend anybody interested in plays should just dive into what they like and are interested in and see where that leads them. Once you find that play that speaks to you, find out who taught or inspired that playwright. And so on and so on. But the point is to see plays, engage with them as living word, and dive in.

Q: What new projects are on your horizon?
A: Dabbling a lot more in the digital space, creating spoken word videos like this one:

• A Parental Advisory is a breakbeat play commissioned by Milwaukee Rep, about the history of obscenity in music as explored by a rapper and his DJ on stage
• Quotables: a breakbeat play is about a misunderstanding exploded between a professor and her student
• My play Scarfoot Lives is a play I worked my ass off for Arena Stage that will hopefully be produced some day sooner than later

About PlayFest 2021

Immerse yourself in the world of new plays as The Basel-Kiene Family joins City Beverages in presenting PlayFest 2021! This year’s new play festival features six groundbreaking new works that will be presented over the course of two weekends, November 5 – 14, 2021.

Learn More