Creating new work is a challenging process, often riddled with unforeseen obstacles, tough decisions and unique opportunities to develop innovative art. We sat down with the playwrights and directors of UTNT (UT New Theatre) to discuss their process of creating these new plays, how those works have changed and why it’s important to let these works evolve as they are read, developed and, ultimately, presented to an audience.
Drew Paryzer (Playwright, Loverboy):
“You don’t automatically win “good play points” for jam-packing your writing with big ideas and unique characters and flashy stage directions. Plays are just sentences. When my mind is on writing affecting sentences and making sure they’re in the right order, things start falling into place for me as a writer.
There is no better feeling than having a collaborator explain what’s actually happening in a play I thought I knew. It opens my heart. It makes me feel less alone as a human being. Collaboration for me, as a playwright, can feel like a group of wonderful people are coming together to eat my heart. This is an incredible feeling for me. If my writing is working, then it’s nourishing them. I don’t need to salt my heart to make it tastier. Let them eat!
Through this process we’ve made some amazing discoveries about this play. I wrote scenes with those amazing discoveries in mind, and then I realized those discoveries lived exactly where they needed to live, from the start: under the text. Sometimes (oftentimes?) the best thing to do as a playwright is to let the audience discover those things in the way I have; in other words, do nothing.
The process of rewriting is a critical element in creating new work. I saw one of my favorite lines not quite working, again and again. Then my director, Jess Shoemaker, asked our actor to stand and turn to the other actor, and suddenly it was perfect and an incredible moment in the play that sparked an important rewrite. Similarly, I wrote a section of a scene that was feeling forced, a little too dark and on-the-nose. Jess directed it with a comic touch, and it’s become one of my favorite parts of the play. Jess has such vision and imagination, and it’s been such a joy to see her make something with my words that feels like it truly belongs to both of us – and everyone else in that room, as well.
We’ve developed a ‘yes’ room. We say ‘yes’ to each other and we trust each other to make leaps and changes and course-corrections when they’re needed. It’s a room that is unselfish and guided by creating beautiful things for one another. I don’t know how I got so lucky to be in a room like this, for my first full production.”
Jess Shoemaker (Director, Loverboy)
“For a very long time, I only made plays by dead authors; mostly Shakespeare. Coming to The University of Texas at Austin with the joyful task of learning how to collaborate with playwrights, who are very much alive, has been a deeply enriching experience – both as a human and as theatre-maker.
Being in the room with a playwright is difficult to describe. You are being handed something that is composed of personal bits of another artist. You are asked to breathe life into their words; create a three-dimensional heartbeat; explore meticulously into each corner and bring forward unexpected treasure. Like human beings, new plays change and grow and reveal big surprises. Plays respond immediately to the world around them with brave directness – and shape themselves with extraordinary dexterity and warmth, to their collaborators.
I have found new plays uniquely qualified to sharpen my artistic skills: they force you to listen harder, to thoughtfully engage with others. They force you to breathe, take big risks, make some mistakes and revise your plans. In process, these plays have all invited me to be a fuller human. I hope they offer our audiences that same thing.”
Travis Tate (Playwright, MotherWitch)
“The challenge of creating new work is that the work is really alive; it’s living and maturing into what it wants to be. And everyone in the room is responsible for helping to get the work standing on its own two feet by opening. Alice, my director; the actors; the designers; the dramaturg, Tiffany; have brought such beautiful nuanced ideas to the play. Having all these brilliant minds in the room to collaborate with has stretched me as an artist. Even our wonderful team of stage managers (Catie, Diamond and Kirk) have influenced how we, as a group, are bringing this play to life. There is serious interrogation of the play. No one is afraid to ask questions, but that’s all balanced with a sense of play, a ton of laughter, yo-mama jokes and candy. We’ve really made a supreme artistic community in just six small weeks. For me, it’s changed the play itself, what it means to me, and, hopefully, what it will mean to an audience.”
Alice Stanley (Director, MotherWitch)
“It’s a very special thing to collaborate with someone for a full year. It’s a lot of responsibility. As a director of a new play, I am always negotiating how I can help the playwright understand their work better and strengthen what’s on the page and then how I can bring that page to life.
With MotherWitch, our aesthetic and the values of the piece have remained consistent for some time. In the production of a new work, design elements can often change or be cut rapidly. We’ve had that happen some, of course, but the visual bones of the piece have remained in the same world, allowing us to deepen and sharpen our design concepts over the course of the production process. The Yoruban magic of the family, the talking cat and the blue light they create have remained steady guideposts throughout our process.
I think the biggest changes have been made surrounding the relationships of the three women. The magic and spectacle serve as an envelope for an intimate family drama, and negotiating that relationship between a mother, grandmother and daughter in ways that move all three forward and around each other can be tricky. In my experience, the rehearsal room and the actors are invaluable to this kind of script development, and I’m grateful to be part of providing that analysis.”
Paz Pardo (Playwright, Milton, MI)
“In June 2016, I finished Milton, MI.
Totally done. I’d gotten feedback from faculty members Liz Engelman and Steven Dietz; done a closed-door workshop with Hannah Wolf; a table read with Diana Lynn Small, Pat Shaw, Alex Bassett and Jordan Maranto. I’d done about five drafts of the play over the course of two years. I figured—that was it. It was absolutely finished.
Famous last words.
Since Steven Dietz informed me that he and Liz Engelman had selected Milton, MI for UTNT (UT New Theatre) for the 2017-2018 season, I’ve saved nine separate versions of the play on my computer. I’ve gotten feedback from Steven Dietz five times; Liz Engelman three times; Kirk Lynn and KJ Sanchez one time each; and at least 40 times from Milton, MI’s director, Adam L. Sussman. My entire cohort gave me feedback in Colloquium; I got emails; I got hugs. The cast inspired rewrites with their enthusiasm and questions. There is not one moment or word in this play that hasn’t been scrutinized by someone else’s eyes. Through UTNT, I’ve learned that making a new play isn’t a processing of finishing; it’s a process of finding the right folks to make you keep working.”
Adam L. Sussman (Director, Milton, MI)
“Milton, MI is a play about two poets in a long term relationship who can’t communicate with one another. It’s also about the slug that takes over their house, which is to say Milton, MI is about smart people in a familiar situation, and also a big strange metaphor.
A big part of my process on this exhilarating piece has been finding the balance between the ordinary and bizarre. How much craziness can this text bear in performance? And how can we make the domestic lives of this couple feel both strange and familiar? This question has also seeped into the process: how does one design a rehearsal process for characters who live in a pedestrian world, and other characters who live in a heightened, animalistic one? The answer lies in uncovering the emergence of the extraordinary over the course of the play. The slug is a manifestation of something unsaid, unexamined. The more the familiar world seeks to reassert a status-quo, the more restless the slug gets.
Of course there is no status quo in the creation of new work, things are constantly shifting through the process of revising drafts and refining staging. In this way, our whole creative team is really the slug in the room, developing an idea from one person’s written word into a living, breathing collective experience.”
UTNT (UT New Theatre)
April 12-22, 2018
Oscar G. Brockett Theatre