Plays and Playwrights 2007
An Interview With
Ashlin Halfnight
Diving Normal
Your play, Diving Normal, features a unique trio of protagonists. Tell us a little bit about them, and where you got the initial idea for the play.
Well, initially these three characters actually lived in another, more populous, play called Bird Bones. It was primarily about male sexuality and aggression, and in the initial drafts there were too many people and too many storylines. The arc of the thing was a little messy and the relationships were a little diluted… so I cruelly and quietly dispensed with some characters and focused the play around the triangular relationship between Fulton, his buddy Gordon, and his hometown crush, Dana.
The play was originally written, way back, because a couple of actor friends of mine asked me to cook something up for them — kind of a guy’s play, I guess. I write plenty of stuff that’s born strictly out of my own special dementia, but a handful of my plays have begun in this manner — at the request of an actor. With God’s Waiting Room, PL115 approached me with a copy of Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita and said, have you read this? I said, no. They said, you should — and then you should write us a play. Please. And that’s exactly what I did. It was great fun. I love to work with actors in the early stages of writing a piece; I begin to hear their voices, to see their peculiarities and let those play into — or against — the character… there’s no blessing like a room full of talented and fearless actors who are willing to jump into an unfinished, unformed script. I love to watch them swim around in it and punch holes in it. Their very presence is a challenge and a motivation — a kick in the ass that makes me push my process to a higher level.
From those early “guy-play” beginnings until the production, the storyline for Diving Normal went all over the place, and I must admit that, at some point, I lost the core of it. I have a deep love for the play, but it’s a flawed piece. On one level it’s about a love triangle with some sexual fireworks, but I think I really meant it to be about a woman engaged in a very Freudian struggle. For Dana, there’s normalcy and civilization on one side, and a genuine, instinctual passion for something the world considers deviant or destructive on the other… her fight to find a balance between those two equally positive poles is where the play should live, but I think I missed the mark. Perhaps by not understanding her character enough, perhaps by playing up the comedy too much, or perhaps by just sheer confusion, I let go of the grit of the play — of Dana’s grit. It pops up here and there, but it often feels a little mechanical.
I think the male characters are less problematic. Gordon is loosely based on students I’ve had with Asperger’s disorder. He’s very kind, very organized and extremely literal. Jayd McCarty came on board early in the workshop process and really lived in Gordon’s shoes for a long time, something that gave me a consistent foundation to build on — and a trusted collaborator to try things with. He really helped create not only the role, but also parts of the character. Fulton is a guy we all know, I think. He’s nice and sweet, but a little slow on the uptake — sometimes willfully. I guess he’s the guy everybody cheers for — I don’t know… like the dork in American Pie — everybody just hopes to hell that he gets laid before the end of the show.
Yes, I just drew a parallel between my play and American Pie.
You've done two plays — Diving Normal and God's Waiting Room — at the New York International Fringe Festival. Obviously, this has been a good experience for you. What do you like about doing FringeNYC?
FringeNYC is a wonderful, disorganized, inclusive, mosh-pit of theater. I guess I consider myself kind of a downtown-ish theater guy, and I’m proud to be associated with something that is a testament to the breadth and depth of originality that lives in this city. The work is not always good… in fact, it’s often just plain bad… but the festival as a whole is a great, and much-needed, counterpart to the recycled crap that’s being paraded across a lot of the bigger stages in this city.
Actually, though, my first exposure to FringeNYC came not in New York, but in Montreal. The first play I ever wrote was produced by a New York actor who put it on here as a showcase, and then trekked it up to the Montreal Fringe — which was really wild because I grew up in Canada. Talk about going a long way to travel a small distance. But the Montreal Fringe was an amazing, eye-opening experience for me — the camaraderie, the guerrilla-style stuff they were doing — they had a play in a moving car — not to mention the partying… it just seemed communal and brilliant and new. And despite the fact that my play was juvenile and slightly offensive, it enjoyed a sold-out run and a lot of attention. I enjoyed just being in Montreal, walking around thinking, holy shit, I’m a person who wrote a play that someone really actually put on a stage… and some people really actually came and paid money to see it. For a guy who’d spent most of his life in either the library or the locker rooms, it was a great initiation to the world of theater.
Working with PL115 on God’s Waiting Room at FringeNYC was great. We literally went in with just a handful of stuff; we threw it down on the ground, turned on the sound, turned down the lights, and did the play. Alexis Poledouris, Mark Valadez and Shaun Rance were amazing collaborators and Melanie Sylvan and M.E. Peters were fabulous — everyone involved just got on the same page from day one and got down to the business of making theater, without all the bullshit. I feel indebted to every single person involved in that production. Seriously. Watching that play at P.S. 122 is still the biggest gift I’ve ever been given inside the four walls of a theater.
Diving Normal was also a great experience — our production was blessed with an amazing cast (Eliza Baldi, Josh Heine, and Jayd McCarty) who deservedly took home the award for Best Ensemble, and Mary Kate Burke is a brilliantly talented director. Everyone across the board — Melanie Sylvan, Jesse Poleshuck, K.J. Hardy, Sarah Maiorino, Andrew Michaelson – they all really threw their backs behind this play and brought it to life under some pretty tight constraints. It was only through their hard work that the show sold out and transferred. For me personally, though, it wasn’t the most satisfying run… I was just back from Budapest, and the play, the city and the festival seemed a little out of step with where I was at mentally.
Before you started working in the theatre, you were a professional hockey player. What made you decide to switch careers, and what made you pick theatre and playwriting?
I stopped playing hockey because of a combination of things: a few concussions, a botched contract, and, to be honest, a lot of boredom. I’d lost a few teeth, had three or four dozen stitches in my face — I was sporting a thrice broken nose and lacerated hamstrings… the usual junk. But when you start having multiple concussions, you’re into dangerous, life-affecting territory. I forgot things, got moody, broke up with my girlfriend; essentially, I began to act like a different person. I kept it to myself, though, because I didn’t want the coach, or the management, to think I had a soft head. When you come to pro hockey from a place like Harvard, the last thing you need is people thinking you’re soft. So I kept quiet and secretly wondered if I was damning myself into a life of geriatric, stuttering bewilderment.
After my second year under contract with the Hurricanes, when negotiations didn’t look good, I went and played in Germany for a bit… and then I quit and moved to New York. I got a job as a waiter and started classes in acting and writing at Lee Strasberg. A week later, my agent called and said he had a contract for me with Detroit — 35 grand for the last three months of the season. I turned it down… and kept serving overpriced food for crappy wages. When I chose that over 35 grand to skate around on the ice, I knew my hockey career was over. Incidentally, my career as a waiter ended soon after that, too. I was fired one night and booted into the street under a hailstorm of invective and red-faced insult.
I think I became a playwright because theater is like a game — a sports game. It’s live and competitive. You’d better show up with your good shit every night or the whole thing’s going to go to hell, and you’re going to lose. There’s nothing else like it. Art and film and novels and whatever else are just practice. You can do it over and over and over again until you get it right, so in effect, each individual effort is meaningless. In theater — and dance — like in sports, you only get one chance. It’s fleeting and fast and it’s done and gone. It’s all adrenaline and focus. I like that. I like being a part of that.
I also like the team aspect of theater. I like that everyone comes into a room – there are rituals and sacred words, nods and hugs and a cohesive effort to build something in space and time. I need time alone, sure, but I like people too much to be a fully reclusive writer. Growing a four-foot beard in the wilds of Maine while I peck at a keyboard and stare at my belly-button… not my ideal working environment.
You're also a musician and a songwriter, and have previously released a CD of your music. Mind telling us some more about that?
There are equal parts shame and pride associated with my foray into the singer/songwriter world. I love to write songs — and I can’t stop doing it — but my voice is decidedly bad and my guitar and piano skills are roughly equivalent to those of a blind monkey. Nonetheless, I recorded a demo CD while I was playing hockey; we sold it at the rink and then donated the proceeds to a home for children. It was fun and weird and kind of successful — so once I moved to the city, I recorded a full-length album and played a bunch in bars and whatnot. It was kind of cool, and the second CD, At The Hot Gates (from T.S. Eliot) was actually passable… but the performances were kind of terrible. I’m blessed with generous friends who were willing to come out and stomach my warbling for an hour. I owe a lot of people a lot of beer.
Anyway, I’m working on a musical and I still play and write, and I think it informs how I hear my characters…
You were awarded a Fulbright Fellowship, and consequently spent the 2005-06 season at the National Theatre of Hungary. First of all, what exactly is a Fulbright Fellowship, and how did it lead to you being in Hungary? And how was that overall experience?
The Fulbright is a country-specific residency and grant that sends Americans abroad and brings people from other countries to the US. It’s awarded to businesspeople, educators, scientists, artists, and just about anyone else, and allows for a year-long field-specific project and cultural exchange. The idea, a brilliant one I might add, is to increase global/American understanding and “on the ground” diplomacy by sending and hosting accomplished or promising individuals from many different disciplines.
One of my best friends married a Hungarian and I was in the wedding, in Budapest, about 5 years ago. I fell in love with the city, its people, and the history of the country. You can only apply to one city or country for the Fulbright and Budapest was really the only place I wanted to go — so it made my decision pretty easy.
While there, I wrote several plays — one is currently in development at the Lark, and another went through many iterations before actually becoming a bilingual English/Hungarian piece that we’re going to workshop this summer — in Budapest.
The year in Hungary was nothing short of life changing. I woke up each day simply amazed that someone had picked me to come to this beautiful place and write, learn, and absorb all that I could. It was a blessing the likes of which I may never see again. I now speak passable Hungarian and have a handful of talented, life-long friends there — mostly working in theater — who will welcome me with open arms whenever I come back. It’s like going home.
Finally, you are the Co-Executive Director of Electric Pear Productions, a new theatre company. Tell us some more about Electric Pear, and what you guys have in store for theatergoers in the near future.
Electric Pear is the direct translation, from Hungarian, of light bulb — an image that we thought brought up ideas and inspiration… and, I guess, fruit salad. We’re a company that does a few things, but our basic mission is to produce two traditional plays, one cross genre piece, and one international piece each season. We also do a playwright’s workshop and an artist retreat, but those aren’t really public events.
We’re interested in expanding the scope of the American stage without getting really weird and incomprehensible. We think looking to other countries, for writers, plays, ideas, or collaboration partners, is one way to do that — and the other is to look to other disciplines (music, art, dance, etc.) for cross-pollination. To that end, we just closed a sold-out run of Synesthesia, which we’ve called… a game of artistic telephone across the genres. Synesthesia is a yearly thing we’re going to do which passes work from one artist to another in a chain — like the schoolyard game of telephone. It goes through spoken word, music, prose, film, theater, comedy, photography… and a bunch of others. We had some astonishing things come out of it this year and I can’t wait for next.
Beyond that, Electric Pear has a bunch of stuff coming up. We’re producing my play Baby Face in June. It’s about a family in Florida struggling against classic American obstacles — death, abortion, ageing — and Wal-Mart. In July we will be headed to Budapest to workshop my bilingual play Family Dinner with the National Theater of Hungary and the Merlin International Theater. In the fall of 2007, we will hopefully be premiering a new piece by a writer we’re working with right now… and then a musical, and Synesthesia again, and… well… that’s enough for now…
I’m so pleased and honored to be included in the anthology this year. Thanks so much for bringing me into the fold.
Interview with Ashlin Halfnight was conducted by Michael Criscuolo February 2007.
