Paula Vogel and Tina Landau on the opening of “Mom Play.” (Picture by Avery Brunkus)
As soon as begun, the play took simply two weeks to write down. However in some ways it had been a long time within the making. So had the collaboration.
Paula Vogel and Tina Landau have identified each other for the reason that Nineties, the identical decade Vogel’s late brother Carl and a model of herself first appeared onstage in her play The Baltimore Waltz. Later that decade, a model of her mom would go to audiences within the Pulitzer-winning How I Discovered to Drive. So when it got here to the query of who would direct Mom Play—Vogel’s newest, now at Broadway’s Helen Hayes Theater, wherein recollections of her brother, mom, and self work together—Vogel turned to Landau, with whom she’d labored on the 2008 Lengthy Wharf premiere of A Civil Battle Christmas and its 2012 manufacturing at New York Theatre Workshop.
As is typical of each artists’ work, the roots of this present manufacturing will be traced even additional again than the ‘90s, to each girls’s childhoods, to Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill and Clifford Odets and the entire historical past of American household performs, even to a bit identified Russian formalist named Viktor Shklovsky and his 1917 essay “Artwork as Machine.” Keen to listen to how their collaboration labored and the way these influences got here collectively to make the so-referential-it’s-practically-hyper-linked manufacturing (which has acquired 4 Tony nominations), I spoke with Vogel and Landau by way of Zoom. Our dialog has been edited for size and readability.
HOLLY L. DERR: I’ve so many issues I’d love to speak to each of you about. My first couple of questions are particularly for you, Paula, and they’re about your influences. I’m questioning first about this affect of yours, Shklovsky, and the place defamiliarization comes from. I’m questioning, to begin with, why is that this the primary time I’m listening to of him? Is that Stalin’s fault? Why does Brecht get all of the credit score?
PAULA VOGEL: I really feel like Bertolt Brecht was simply form of ripping off different writers after which placing his identify on prime of theirs. Brecht went to Moscow and got here again and “found” epic theatre; he “found” alienation impact mystically after he went to Moscow, the place he really uncovered Shklovsky and defamiliarization. Alienation impact and defamiliarization are literally the identical, solely Brecht insists that the alienation impact has a political finish, and Shklovsky simply mentioned it’s fundamental human notion: If we hold seeing one thing a lot that we don’t have a look at it anymore, there comes a degree the place the factor that we’re stepping over grabs us by the ankle and makes us listen. That’s defamiliarization. So I favor giving credit score to the unique one that introduced that phrase into the dialog. It’s one thing I learn in grad faculty.
I really feel that Tina does this routinely, and that’s form of a pun in itself, as a result of Shklovsky talks about computerized notion being what we do in life—that we’re principally sleepwalking by life, and artwork makes us get up. For instance, within the current play of mine she directed, she has a collection of vignettes about cockroaches. What nobody but has identified is that the cockroaches within the very starting begin out extra horrific and monstrous and turn out to be extra mythic; the final cockroach sequence has candy little cockroaches popping out of a field. I feel that is what we do to our mother and father: We make them mythological creatures, however with perspective and distance, they’re simply candy little home creatures that come out of our bins.
TINA LANDAU: I heard of Shklovsky by Anne Bogart, and I don’t actually know a lot, however I’ve used the phrase “to Shklovsky one thing.” Like, should you take an iPhone, you have a look at an object and also you merely like, flip it in a unique route [She turns her iPhone over and shows the image on the back], you’re like, “This isn’t an iPhone, it’s an image of the constellations.” By merely switching your perspective on one thing or altering the item itself, you see it as if for the primary time, not for its use however for its intrinsic qualities.
PAULA: There have been principally the 2 or three influences in my life—apart from each person who I work with, and each new play that’s written impacts me. It’s Shklovsky, María Irene Fornés, and Bert States, who was my trainer. Bert gave me a method that I might then formulate into my instructing; as soon as I spotted how he was doing it, I did it. So I’ve completely different classes of language acts and completely different classes of how plasticity is used and that form of stuff, nevertheless it was actually Bert who taught me methods to look formulaically, not generically, at playwriting. He was an important author. He died possibly 20 years in the past, however I don’t need his identify to exit of trend. When you choose up Bert at present and also you learn him, you’re like, “Oh my God, I perceive the universe otherwise. Wow.” He wrote one thing referred to as Nice Reckonings in Little Rooms, Irony and Drama, and The Form of Paradox, which is his work on Beckett. They’re simply these elegant little essays.
You could have talked about completely different classes of language acts and the idea of plasticity. Is there a phrase that you simply use in your performs’ buildings? My tendency is to wish to name them episodic, however now that I do know that you’ve got different influences, is there a greater method to discuss your use of construction?
PAULA: You already know, it’s attention-grabbing as a result of I really feel that the whole lot that Tina constructs within the manufacturing is definitely superbly ready in an episodic method. I’d additionally say that we talked rather a lot about sample. Viewpoints is extremely helpful; it’s such an unbelievable method to give us company for the storytelling. I don’t know should you agree with that, however that’s how I really feel—Viewpoints opens up the room for collaboration. I don’t know should you agree with this, Tina, however I form of consider it as a sample play.
TINA: Completely. Yeah, there are episodes, however in some unspecified time in the future I keep in mind the actors saying to me, “Why do I hold going again or hold doing that?” This household form of goes in these cycles which are variations of a theme time and again and over, and the sample is constructed into their pathology, actually.
By way of Viewpoints and composition, how a lot did these instruments serve you, Tina, on this explicit play?
TINA: At all times and really a lot. We have been very fortunate that we did a two-week workshop with the actors. The intent of that workshop was by no means to get by the entire play or stage the entire thing; it actually was to kind a foundation of vocabulary and intimacy and data of one another. We led with the query of what makes household. I keep in mind the day I used to be describing Viewpoints and I mentioned to all of them, Jim Parsons and Celia Keenan-Bolger, who I knew have been gung-ho and wished to do it, after which Jessica Lange—I checked out her and I mentioned, “Are you up for Viewpoints?” And she or he was like, “Oh, sure, completely. What is that this factor?” I imagine that early work is the inspiration for the whole lot they’re and really feel and maintain onto as they’re performing. They’re the tightest-knit trio.
PAULA: One other factor that brings up in my thoughts is: What will we do after we’ve been within the American theatre for a while and we’re in it for the method? We’re in it to study issues and discover a stimulating course of that defamiliarizes us to maybe our praxis of the final 40 years. I wish to go right into a room and do issues with a gaggle of those that I’ve by no means finished earlier than, or that I don’t know but methods to do. However due to the way in which we now have not endowed the theatre however have handled it like a capitalist product that’s on {the marketplace}, so the much less time spent the higher it’s for the bookkeeping, we’re making an attempt to determine methods to construct a course of when it doesn’t exist institutionally anymore. The reality of the matter is, I’m bored by the enterprise. I’m completely bored by the trimmings and the enterprise of theatrical equipment on this nation. I’d be completely content material and completely happy to spend 4 weeks in a room and by no means have it open. This course of was simply life-giving. I imply, it’s very clear that these three characters are being created by the method, not by me as a author.
TINA: Paula and I are kindred spirits within the sense of how we’re in a room, in our perception that the open coronary heart and the open thoughts and the many-headed storyteller is best than the one. I’d say we run a really open, free, collaborative room, and these actors actually took to that and liked it and reveled in it. That form of area allowed for a form of freedom and play and possession from them with the play and the characters.
There are numerous methods you two appear to be a very good match. You’ve had one collaboration previous to this (on Civil Battle Christmas), proper? I feel that actually illustrates one factor you will have in widespread: the way in which that you simply deal with historical past as supply materials. Are you able to inform me a bit bit about that first collaboration, after which how the second got here to be?
TINA: Did you simply name me and ask me if I wished to direct this factor?
PAULA: Yeah, I simply referred to as you. I had been happening and seeing nearly the whole lot I might that you simply have been doing. So I simply referred to as you and I mentioned, “Would you contemplate doing Civil Battle Christmas?” You mentioned sure.
TINA: In fact I did. Paula and I’ve been in one another’s orbit since way back to I can keep in mind in my inventive life, actually, and I knew all her performs. What I keep in mind about Civil Battle Christmas is that this unimaginable activity—and I imply unimaginable in one of the best ways—of telling what felt like a whole bunch of tales and lives being interwoven by historical past and narrative and music. And eight,000 costume modifications. I keep in mind feeling it as a tapestry that we have been making collectively. Paula’s imaginative and prescient was huge and kaleidoscopic. And it was my favourite method to work.
The factor about Paula that I’ll say is, and I do know possibly one or two different playwrights that I can actually say this about, who actually get what I imagine, which is that the textual content is a springboard for the occasion. The last word objective is what occurs in that theatre on a given evening between the performers and the viewers. The way in which she offers with textual content is as a malleable factor. What works because the check of that’s not on the web page, however within the area within the our bodies of the actors within the second. The textual content is like lights or like area or like sound—it’s one of many components we’re utilizing to create the full occasion. Paula actually believes that and lives by it. And on daily basis of rehearsal is proof that she does.
PAULA: The factor I keep in mind of that first course of is that I’d are available and they’d be doing a Viewpoints train to start out the day, and there was this sense of all people within the room feeling repletion, feeling we achieved one thing. It wasn’t concerning the scene or the textual content, it was a couple of dialog that the group was having with one another. Due to that dialog, one of the crucial significant issues in my life occurred, which is that we celebrated the election of Barack Obama collectively, in that room, whereas we have been wanting again on the context of the Civil Battle. I feel we simply sat round in a circle and cried as we talked about what it meant to us.
Tina is a good artist in that the dialog you open isn’t about historical past; it’s about historical past on this current second that’s created. That’s the method of creating it three-dimensional: to acknowledge there isn’t a such factor as a historical past play. It’s occurring at present in entrance of the viewers.
So, minimize to 16 years later and Mom Play. Paula, did you simply name Tina and say, “Do you wish to do that play?”
PAULA: Yeah, I did.
TINA: I bought an electronic mail. It was one line lengthy: “I’ve a play. Can I ship it to you?” And I simply mentioned sure. That was my reply.
You didn’t even must learn it.
TINA: No, and I nonetheless really feel that method. I imply, I’ll go on report: I’ll direct something Paula Vogel writes.
PAULA: Effectively, I’ve to say, I’ve by no means been as a lot at peace in a course of as I’m proper now. I’ve felt monumental peace with this. That’s as a result of it actually was me pondering that I wished to craft a ritual of forgiveness, understanding that I’d be completely protected, but in addition completely in peril in the easiest method.
TINA: What a ravishing tightrope act feat you achieved, Paula, by being open across the desk with a narrative that’s your coronary heart and blood and historical past and self. It’s a tremendous stability you have been capable of finding between remaining true to those people who find themselves nonetheless very a lot alive inside us and round us and behind us and above us, and honoring the second within the room and an actor or me saying, “Yeah, however can we modify this line?” You actually have been capable of navigate that so gracefully and generously.
PAULA: Effectively, I really feel that I’ve been educated by you. And the truth that I’m penning this play at an age that my mom by no means lived to see made me conscious that there’s a restricted period of time. I higher be open now.
I do really feel that there’s a story about American playwriting that has been written by a number of the guys. It takes a really very long time for rising playwrights to work by what I name the Tyrannosaurus Rex principle of playwriting that—and I say this with absolute love—Edward Albee launched us to. Each comma had higher be there within the intonation of the actor. He sat there like a metronome within the rehearsal course of. So there’s this power, and I do really feel it’s a masculine power, that numerous playwrights have introduced into the room. I’m certain you’ve encountered the youthful Edward Albees, the place not a phrase will be modified. After I meet individuals like that, I attempt to be good about it and say, “Pay attention, you would possibly wish to take into consideration changing into a novelist, as a result of that’s not what that is.” Thank God for commedia dell’arte, as a result of that’s really the correct angle: You write the state of affairs, and also you hand it to the troupe and the troupe makes use of what materials they wish to. Or in the event that they wish to put in a pratfall, that’s nice too.
TINA: When you have a look at the textual content of Mom Play, there’s rather a lot written out however not numerous stage instructions, not numerous directions about how an actor is supposed to really feel or play one thing. After which there are total stage instructions which are like, “They usually do a Busby Berkeley quantity, or one thing like that.” You already know, it’s that form of openness that’s like: Right here’s the spirit, and invent as you’ll.
I really feel like there’s a Vogelian method of writing stage instructions that not solely you write, but in addition your college students. There’s one thing I have a tendency to note of their stage instructions that tells me they studied with you. What have you ever advised them?
PAULA: I principally say to individuals: Don’t inform me what the couch appears to be like like. Inform me how the couch feels. Is the couch having a miserable day? There was a one stage route in a Heather McDonald play referred to as An Virtually Holy Image: “The sky is the colour of disappointment.” I keep in mind studying that and saying, That’s precisely proper. Don’t inform me concerning the lime inexperienced of the couch in a Tennessee Williams play. Inform me that he purchased the couch after going by a binge, and it was such a hideous colour of inexperienced that when he sobered up, the couch gave the impression to be getting greater and greater and greater in his lounge, and he fled to Mexico. It’s extra like searching for a form of emotional, non secular animus in issues that actually can’t be acted or directed, if that is sensible.
In fact, I’ve at all times finished: “Write one thing that’s unimaginable to stage.” That was a really early factor. For instance, I like the stage instructions in Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl; I simply assume they’re beautiful. I feel this goes again to what so moved me about Tennessee Williams: He gave me slices of his reminiscence. Are you able to direct Cat on a Scorching Tin Roof, understanding what he places in the midst of his stage instructions, “I’m reminded of {a photograph} I noticed once I was 5 years outdated of Robert Louis Stevenson’s veranda”? Does that enable you direct the play? Does it enable you act Maggie? Perhaps. However for me, as a reader, I’m instantly going, Oh my God, he’s speaking on to me. So right here’s my query: Can I speak on to my collaborators and to my readers and provides them the synapses in my mind that they’ll fully ignore? I don’t wish to direct the play and I don’t wish to act the play. I shouldn’t. I really feel like numerous stage instructions do.
TINA: I had by no means considered this earlier than, however I feel it could be correct to say that more often than not, whether or not I’m focused on a play is predicated on the opening stage instructions. Like, I keep in mind once I first learn Tarell McCraney’s Within the Purple and Brown Water, the very first thing I directed by him, the place he describes one thing a couple of line of individuals like Yoruban gods. I keep in mind pondering, “I’m in.” I keep in mind the identical factor with William Saroyan’s Time of Your Life. That’s my hook, far more than what occurs within the first scene or how the dialogue is written. It’s form of what the preliminary gesture is, what it holds, the standard or evocation of it.
PAULA: That is additionally why I’ve gotten so hooked on Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. The outline of the sound of the swamp on the primary three pages of Applicable is absolute genius.
Particularly on this case, how did you talk what you wished for the “Phyllis Ballet”—the lengthy, wordless scene later within the play, wherein Jessica Lange holds the stage with a collection of seemingly mundane however telling personal actions? How did you inform your collaborators what you have been searching for there?
TINA: Within the script, there was a really particular and, unbeknownst to me at first, sensible laying out of a collection of actions. From the primary day, Paula mentioned, “Take what you’ll, depart what you’ll, make your personal, add, subtract.” When Jessica and I began engaged on it, the very first thing we did was the whole lot Paula wrote. We simply adopted it like a sacred map. Then in a short time, inside most likely the primary afternoon of rehearsal, I referred to as Paula and was like, “Do you thoughts if we take out an entire part?” In fact she was high-quality with it, however I actually appreciated it. The reality is, once I went again and mined it, I found it was far more considerate and intentional and stuffed with that means than I had realized at first in how Paula initially laid it out. We tried to stay true to what we found in that.
PAULA: I feel that needs to be finished with all new performs. That openness needs to be there. I simply had a tiny little second of recognition, which is that I feel I began opening up once I first labored with Anne on Baltimore Waltz, as a result of I spotted there was no method I might seize my brother; he was lifeless. Due to this fact, I simply needed to give it over, as a result of nobody was ever going to know him the way in which I did, or appear like him, or sound like him; subsequently, this was totally a theatrical creation. As soon as I might embrace that with him, I began realizing that the whole lot I did can solely be created by my collaborators within the room. It simply moved me away from the—you already know, I shouldn’t name it the Edward Albee mannequin, however the insistence on authorship, which I feel actually will get in the way in which.
I feel it’s truthful. He’s on the report being that form of playwright.
PAULA: And pay attention, he was an excellent man. I used to get into fights with him over rewrites. I actually loved my arguments with him.
I’ve this tendency, as a result of I train historical past and principle in addition to directing, to group performs and other people in baskets by style or oeuvre or class. I used to be making an attempt to consider wherein baskets I’d put you two. It appears to me that you’re each postmodernists to a sure diploma. Is {that a} phrase that resonates with you?
PAULA: The factor about postmodernism is it existed earlier than post- and fashionable. I feel that we’re holding onto theatricalism. Theatre within the twentieth and twenty first century in America completely dotes upon stage realism and naturalism and Technique performing. I’m not against these issues, however I favor to know that I’m in a theatre and in a efficiency. That’s simply me. I do imagine within the mechanism of distancing that the stage may give us, in order that at instances we pull out and return into it. I don’t know. Tina, do you contemplate your self postmodern?
TINA: Me? I don’t even know what that time period means. I imply, I’m not being coy. Holly, are you able to inform me what you assume postmodern means? Then I can reply to it.
Proper, a part of it’s this relationship to historical past. Mom Play has this relationship to the canon and to The Glass Menagerie that appears very postmodern to me. That’s one aesthetic attribute of postmodernism, that usually items are in dialogue with the earlier phases of theatre or different iterations of theatre or artwork.
PAULA: Okay, and my response to this comes straight from Bert States. I did it in a workshop, I can not discover it written, however Bert principally teams all artwork actions into three levels. The naïve stage, when it’s first being made by collaborators, and the viewers doesn’t know what it’s and neither do the makers. We’re going to chop up phrases and draw them out of a hat. What will we name it? Dada. And you then go into the delicate: We’re going to chop up phrases and put them right into a hat, however we all know methods to do it, and the viewers is aware of the way it was made. We’re all refined within the vocabulary, after which we transfer into decadence, the place we all know it.
Take realism. Any individual says, “Let’s strap up sides of beef, put a butcher store onstage, and we’re going to name it realism. The blood goes to drip on the stage.” Proper? However you then get refined, and also you begin utilizing temper lighting and no matter else, and the viewers is aware of. And you then transfer into decadence. When you simply have a look at the works of Ibsen, you undergo all three levels. Everybody does. To what you’re calling postmodern, I would say: Decadence principally quotes its personal historical past. Euripides quoted his personal historical past to Greeks. Sondheim quotes his personal historical past in the way in which that he quotes from his precise music in his later work, like Ardour. So sure, we’re quoting the canon, however that is also decadent realism. I really feel that we’re labeling a separate motion what may very well be the pure decay of the twentieth century when it comes to the theatrical artwork kind.
TINA: I’m studying rather a lot about myself on this dialog. What I’m studying is: Oh, proper, these are issues I used to consider rather a lot, and I don’t anymore. I’m being actually candid. It’s like, I don’t know. I’m not fascinated by something about my historical past or principle or different artists once I go into the theatre and work today. I’m so within the current second, and all I care about is making one thing that’s alive and very important and mandatory within the second. Every part else you’re speaking about, is like—I don’t even know what any of which means proper now.
PAULA: I really assume that that’s the hallmark of a mature artist. I don’t take into consideration these items once I sit down to write down. It’s simply what comes out. However as a result of I nonetheless do, for instance, occasional workshops with veterans or with individuals who’ve by no means written. I’ll give an instance. I feel it’s now your second nature in the way in which that, for instance, you principally crafted a by line with the rabbit that refers back to the historical past of Baltimore Waltz—the way in which that folks gasp when Celia brings it out of the field, due to your staging.
TINA: There’s a whole secret language and historical past within the music of this manufacturing of Mom Play that nobody is aware of however me. There are Easter eggs and jokes and references, enjoying with what 12 months it’s and what films have been out that 12 months, and what films my mother and father produced, and the way Jessica’s motion is timed to the music within the factor. You already know what numerous it’s, Paula: I made a option to not use any music with phrases in the entire play. It’s all instrumental, however all these items have phrases. So if you already know the phrases and also you’re listening to the phrases throughout sure moments of what somebody is doing onstage, it is vitally humorous or enlightening.
My final query is, if today you’re not fascinated by principle and also you’re not fascinated by historical past, then what are you fascinated by? What’s in your thoughts?
TINA: Life and dying. Folks dying. Redwood bushes. Nature. My relationship with my liked one. You already know, I really feel like my themes today are circling round time and simply what it means to be most absolutely alive. That’s what I’m fascinated by.
PAULA: These are nice issues. I feel in very related methods. I feel rather a lot about time as a result of I’m within the final portion of my life. I’m pondering rather a lot about youthful generations and watching their tales after 30, 40, or 50 years, and I’m so completely happy that I’ve lived lengthy sufficient to observe their narratives. I really feel like now I simply wish to be open to whoever walks by the door in my home and let the whole lot go for some time. That is such an odd area and career, and it’s a blessing, nevertheless it’s actually mandatory to have the ability to step away and soak in as a lot each day life as we will.
Holly L. Derr (she/her) is a director, author, and head of graduate directing on the College of Memphis.
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