Our second FEED event featured Chief Curator of The Museum of the Moving Image, David Schwartz, in conversation with Lucas Hnath. Their conversation ranged around all sorts of interesting ideas about Disney — the Man and the Myth.

BIOGRAPHY
David Schwartz joined the Museum of the Moving Image in 1985. He is responsible for curating, organizing, and overseeing the Museum’s wide-ranging film and video programs, which include independent and Hollywood films from the silent era to the present, experimental films, documentaries, animation, and other forms of the moving image. He is Editor-at-Large of Moving Image Source (www.movingimagesource.us), the Museum’s online publication.  Schwartz is also a Visiting Assistant Professor in Cinema Studies at Purchase College, and the host of the Westchester Cinema Club. Schwartz was the Director of Programming for the 1998 Hamptons International Film Festival. He has written numerous freelance articles about film for publications including The Washington Post and Newsday, and he has been a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the MacDowell Colony for the Arts, and the Independent Television Service. Prior to joining the Museum, Schwartz was a programmer at the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington, New York. He received a B.F.A. from the Film Program at SUNY Purchase.

The noted cultural theorist Andrew Ross – from NYU’s Cultural and Social Analysis Department – joined us to do a FEED about his time living in Celebration, Florida. Celebration is the town that The Disney Corporation founded that most resembles Walt Disney’s original vision of EPCOT. Ross is most famous for his now seminal book The Celebration Chronicles (Ballantine Books, 2000). Take a look at his fascinating slide lecture below.

In The Celebration Chronicles, Andrew Ross has written a moving and subtle account of his yearlong stay at Disney’s glistening suburban development in Celebration, Florida. Readers might expect that Ross, a devoted urbanite, would contribute to both the fashionable sport of Disney bashing and the tired genre of suburban reproof. But, like an anthropologist gone native, Ross immersed himself in the community, interviewing dozens of the 20,000 residents, volunteering at the local school, and finding himself pleasantly surprised when his subjects had christened him an honorary Celebrationite. Celebration, Ross argues, is the latest in a long line of utopian communities built to realize the American dream. Many wealthy and eager romantics flocked to the town with a faith that Disney magic would fulfill their hopes for a perfect community (and increase their property values). When the majority of these people found their dreams dashed against the corporation’s bottom line, however, they engaged in grass roots activism that did more to bring their community together than any of the schemes from Disney “imagineers.” Moving from a cogent analysis of the town to a multifaceted consideration of the environmental implications of American liberty, The Celebration Chronicles is a masterpiece of American studies scholarship. As astute as it is readable, Ross’s book shows how Celebration’s high-octane pursuit of happiness resulted in a limited civic culture and contributed to an overall ecological catastrophe that continues to worsen with each new drive toward the American dream.

BIOGRAPHY
Andrew Ross (born 1956) is a professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. A writer for The New York Times, Artforum, The Nation, Newsweek and The Village Voice, he is also the author and/or editor of numerous books. Much of his writing focuses on labor, the urban environment, and the organization of work, from the Western world of business and high-technology to conditions of offshore labor in the Global South. Making use of social theory as well as ethnography, his writing questions the human and environmental cost of economic growth, has an activist, alternative globalization approach, and emphasizes principles of sustainability.

We conclude our 15th Writer/Director Lab with Elizabeth Irwin’s new play MY MAÑANA COMES, directed by Sarah Krohn. This interview with Elizabeth concludes a series of interviews with the participants of this year’s Lab. Come and join us the reading at Soho Rep. on May 13 at 7PM.

1. Briefly tell us about MY MAÑANA COMES?

MY MAÑANA COMES is the story of the back of the house at a restaurant and what that work means to a group of five men, how it forms each of their lives. We see what these men want and what they can tolerate. We see the difference between what living and working in this country means to those born here, “stuck” here and those “visiting”. When the management decides to eliminate shift pay for the summer due to “necessary budget cuts” what’s tolerable changes, desperation rises, loyalties disappear and both everything and nothing changes.

2. Who are your greatest influences in your writing?

A few people come to mind – certainly for writing contemporary, urban stories with spot on language, Stephen Adley Gurgis has always been a paragon.. For the use of wit and rhythm and wonderfully drawn complicated relationships, Susan Lori Parks’s work has been highly instructive. Young Jean Lee’s work has been a significant influence for many reasons, including her intense dedication to smart, incisive writing about things that matter, to her, to the audience, to our society.

3. What part of the Writer/Director Lab process was the most instructive and entertaining?

Two things: one was the very rare opportunity to see a group of four other peoples’ work all start in the same place of a nugget of thought (500 words to be precise) and then watch how that nugget grew and then shrank and was smashed to be reconstructed entirely differently or maybe just grown slowly, methodically, carefully — in other words, being exposed to four other peoples’ writing processes, all of which were so different and yet had a number of similarities in terms of the questions each writer would have or the approaches a writer would take to reworking something. Second, working with directors from the start and learning about what a director is thinking as we craft the stories onto paper. It was very illuminating to see/hear a director talk about capturing in his/her direction specific aspects of the writing.

4. How do you think the Lab will influence your future work?

The Lab has undoubtedly given me the confidence and encouragement to work in a way which I had never considered, experimenting with magical realism and exploring the “theatrical” part of writing for the theater. Being part of the lab has pushed me to think not of the limits of writing for stage but instead the unique elements allowed by it. I now feel encouraged to take advantage of, to exploit the theatrical license that I had previously seen as an obstacle, something to be worked around. It is incredibly liberating to have gained a completely different perspective on writing for the theater.

5. It’s the 15th anniversary of the Lab! Looking back over the history, which plays that have come out of the Lab are you inspired by and why?

Two playwrights’ work from the Lab stand out to me immediately: Adam Bock and Jackie Sibblies Drury. Adam’s work, specifically THE THUGS, inspired me because of the very interesting  dynamics that come out of people in a workplace – it’s quite different than a family which is also a group you don’t chose for yourself but relate to quite differently than co-workers and it’s also quite different than friends/significant others though of course sometimes co-workers become that. To use a workplace as starting point and then bring in a force that is semi-external/semi-internal was done so very well in his play.

I saw Jackie’s play WE ARE PROUD TO PRESENT…(though not a play specifically from the Lab)  as we were beginning the lab and I was blown away by the very distinct and deliberate way in which she used the fact that this is a theatrical piece, to be performed live. The audience involvement was unspoken and yet so incredibly profound. I couldn’t get it out of my head for days. 

Elizabeth Irwin, birthed in Worcester, raised by Brooklyn and finished by el D.F. (aka Mexico City), is a member of the Dramatic Question Theatre playwrights collective and a graduate of the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater Professional Playwrights Unit.  Her New York workshop productions include:  FOR RISK OF SAFETY and LEARN ME MY NEED at the Workshop Theater, ORIGIN at the Manhattan Theater Source (Estrogenius Festival) and several short plays at the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre. Her play BROOKLYN BETS ALEXI won 3^rd place in the MetLife Nuestras Voces playwriting competition at El Repertorio Espanol and received a workshop production at the Hudson Guild Theater.  She is a member of the 2012-13 Soho Rep Writers/Director Lab. Elizabeth’s additional talents as a teacher in the New York and Mexico City school systems inform her work as playwright.  Elizabeth is a graduate of Amherst, Harvard and the William Esper Studio Meisner Training Program.

We conclude our 15th Writer/Director Lab with Elizabeth Irwin’s new play MY MAÑANA COMES, directed by Sarah Krohn. This interview with Sarah continues a series of interviews with the participants of this year’s Lab. Come and join us the reading at Soho Rep. on May 13 at 7PM.

1. Briefly tell us about your directorial thinking on MY MAÑANA COMES.

MY MAÑANA COMES is set in the back of house of an Upper East Side restaurant and follows four bus boys over the course of eight days. The dynamic range of the play is huge. We see the height of the dinner rush when the kitchen’s a blur of swinging doors, and in the next scene, a reflective late-night conversation unfolds as two of the characters make silverware wraps. Because the play has this beautiful, overwhelmingly musical quality, Elizabeth and I have been thinking about it musically—in terms of tempo, repetition and tone—in addition to approaching it through a psychological lens.

So much of the storytelling is physical and the play is almost cinematic in its detail. There’s a really fun, back-of-house workplace culture of macho banter and one-upmanship, but it’s also a culture where people don’t often say what they mean. On top of that, some of the characters don’t understand English well, and there are even a few scenes in Spanish as well as moments when the play crosses into fantasy. So, language is often an obstacle or a red herring for the characters as well as the audience, whereas something as simple as changing clothes at the end of a shift or a momentary wince can be enormously expressive. It’s a wonderful, complex play that requires and rewards attentiveness on the part of the actors and also the audience.

2. What part of the Writer/Director Lab process was the most instructive and entertaining? How are the directors utilized?

Witnessing the birth of five plays as they moved from conception to first draft. Each of the writers has a completely different process and I’ve loved being in the room from week to week. As lab directors, we’re brought into the conversation much earlier than usual. It’s been an incredible gift and also a little scary to witness and respond to the plays at these fragile early stages of development. Jenny and Ken are amazing leaders and manage to always keep the conversation constructive.

 The Lab also functions as a cultural and intellectual exchange in addition to being a new play incubator. I really enjoyed engaging in spirited discussions about theater making with my lab mates because our perspectives are so diverse. It’s different from a classroom setting, where you and your fellow students are all drinking the same kool aid. In the Lab, there’s usually lots of wine, but not a drop of kool aid.

3. How do you think the Lab will influence your future work?

The Lab has definitely expanded my dramaturgical arsenal and deepened my appreciation/awe/empathy for the playwriting process. It’s also introduced me to a phenomenal group of colleagues and future collaborators.

4. It’s the 15^th anniversary of the Lab! Looking back over the history, which plays that have come out of the Lab are you inspired by and why?

One of the first opportunities I had in New York was assistant directing Clubbed Thumb’s production of PRECIOUS LITTLE by Madeleine George. I’m a huge fan of that play and learned a lot by being in the room with Hal, Madeleine and the cast. I also worked on Clubbed Thumb’s production of TAKARAZUKA!!! last summer as an associate producer. It’s inspiring to know that these and so many other great plays began their lives around the same table where I’ve sat every other Sunday for the past eight months!

5. Do you have any advice for emerging young freelance directors?

Find ways to be the engine of your own work. Work on the plays and ideas you love, even if they’re strange, or impossible, or unmarketable, or don’t adhere to your idea of your “brand.”  Even if you’re just gathering a few people in a room for a few hours every month to explore a script. A passion project, pursued on your own terms in collaboration with artists who excite you, can be a really magnetic, invigorating thing.  

Our live-event FEED programming kicks off with a chat between director Sarah Benson and playwright Lucas Hnath about A PUBLIC READING OF AN UNPRODUCED SCREENPLAY ABOUT THE DEATH OF WALT DISNEY. Hear what drew Lucas to Walt Disney in the first place and get a sense of the kind of research director Sarah Benson did with her design team in preparation for the production.

We continue our 15th Writer/Director Lab with Tracy Thorne’s new play THE NATURE OF THINGS, directed by Kristan Seemel. This interview with Tracy continues a series of interviews with the participants of this year’s Lab. Come and join us the reading at Soho Rep. on May 6 at 7PM.

1. Briefly tell us about THE NATURE OF THINGS.