Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Words, Words, Words
Playwright ‘passionate about sharing diverse perspectives’
The University of Arkansas has offered a playwriting concentration in the Master of Fine Arts program since 1996. In the ensuing quarter of a century, graduates of the threeyear program have gone on to make considerable contributions to the world of theater. Today, the program is headed by New Dramatists alum John Walch, whose plays have been produced by renowned theater companies like the Center Theatre Group, the Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Alabama Shakespeare Company and TheatreSquared. The program’s selling points include its relative intimacy — only two to three playwrights are admitted every other year — and its flexibility: The program offers students opportunities to expand their skills in specialized areas like adaptation, television/screenwriting, Theatre for Young Audiences and writing for the solo-performer.
In lieu of the annual ArkType New Play Festival, canceled in April due to covid-19 concerns, What’s Up! is going to be chatting this summer with the program’s current students,
starting with Adrienne Dawes — an Afro-Latina playwright, producer and teaching artist from Austin, Texas. Her work has won multiple awards, including the David Mark Cohen New Play Award from the Austin Critics Table for her play “Am I White” and an award for Outstanding Original Script from the B. Iden Payne Awards.
Q. Tell us about your bio as a playwright thus far?
A. I had been working for three years as a freelance writer and teaching artist leading up to graduate school, completing residencies at Tulsa Artist Fellowship, Ragdale Foundation,
Crosstown Arts and PlySpace. My work has been produced at Salvage Vanguard Theater (Austin, Texas), Sacred Fools (Los Angeles, Calif.), and American Theatre Company (Tulsa, Okla.) and published with Playscripts, Vintage Books and Applause. So I came to Fayetteville with quite a bit of professional experience in various aspects of theater/live performance: I studied sketch and improv at Second City in Chicago, I founded/co-founded two small theater companies in Austin, and I’ve worked as an actor, director, dramaturg, production manager and producer (all around my day job in nonprofit development).
What I think my career had been missing was more formal training in playwriting and teaching, so when I was offered a spot in University of Arkansas’ graduate program with fellowship support, it felt like a great opportunity to settle into something completely new. My writing is always inspired by the people in my life, places I live and experiences I have (or almost have). Fayetteville offers a lot of inspiration, some of it expected (returning to academia at a predominantly white institution) and some completely unexpected (Big Box is the best private karaoke bar I’ve ever been to, ever).
Q. What are you working on right now?
A. I’m writing a new play titled “This Bitch/Esta Sangre Quiero,” which is a bilingual adaptation of Lope de Vega’s epic comedy, “El perro del hortelano.” I’ve set my play at a beach resort in Tulum, Mexico, within the world of “wellness tourism” and social media influencers, before coronavirus. The play is a romantic comedy with a huge ensemble and several impossible stage directions (characters walk on water; tweets appear projected in the clouds), so it’s a really fun escape right now. I get to hang out on the beach all day with ridiculous characters who go to great lengths to pretend they’re not in love with each other.
Q. Who are your inspirations among writers of all mediums?
A. I am inspired by playwrights like Suzan-Lori Parks, Naomi Iizuka, Lynn Nottage and Sarah Ruhl. I love to see writers and artists of all disciplines experiment with form and structure and history and poetry/musicality.
It is wonderful when artists have the resources and ability to practice long term, that we’re able to see how their voice transforms over time or how specific collaborators influence their work. I also love what mistakes and failure can teach us; my favorite thing to do is to watch movies that are unintentionally terrible yet also completely sincere. It’s the balance of extremes that always intrigues and engages me. How can something so bad be so good (and vice versa)?
Q. Can you talk a little bit about how being in the UA program has benefited your work? What aspects of it have you found most helpful?
A. Institutions offer many helpful resources like access to rehearsal space, an acting cohort that is both extraordinarily talented and “game” for experimental work, and the freedom to explore outside of our discipline for creative research.
I’ve been studying Spanish alongside my theater coursework because I am really passionate about sharing diverse perspectives on stage and screen. Without the ability to speak, read and write in Spanish, I miss out on the opportunity to create, collaborate and translate work for a huge portion of the American and global population. I am extremely intentional about the stories I want to put on stage and who I want to employ to perform in them. That can present challenges in terms of casting; I often have to ask for resources to bring in outside guests or more time to extend audition outreach, but I think that’s exactly what our work as theater artists entails. We’re in an artform that has been dying for over 3,000 years. Whether we are actors, directors, designers, performers or administrators, it’s our job to frequently invite as many different people in to collaborate and participate.
Q. Do you think the current global pandemic will have a lasting effect on the art of theater and, if so, what effect do you predict it will have?
A. The current global pandemic has revealed so much about who and what we value as a society. We’ve seen the very best of humanity: workers who tirelessly sacrifice their own safety to serve their communities, day after day after day. But we’ve also seen the absolute worst. A pandemic does not press pause on police violence against Black people and people of color. A pandemic does not suddenly make capitalism compassionate.
Art can fortunately move much faster than policy. We can build and create new models for new futures from our living rooms, back yards, makeshift studios or Zoom rooms, if need be. I don’t know what this new future will look like, but I hope that I will be able to continue entertaining new stories with collaborators I love and respect.
Q. Do you have any advice for budding playwrights?
A. I think my advice in the “before times” can still translate for emerging playwrights in coronial times: I think to be a good storyteller, you have to be a good listener, a good reader, and you have to make friends outside your discipline. You have to really be in touch with your emotions, even if you don’t completely understand them, even if they embarrass you. Understanding who you are and how you feel about things is probably 30% of playwriting. The ability to express yourself on the page in an engaging way that translates to live performance just takes a lot of practice. It takes a lot of drafts of truly awful pages before any decent ones arrive. Develop discipline about deadlines and frequently show up to the page, even if all you do is scribble, “I don’t know what this means, and I don’t particularly enjoy this,” over and over again. You have to respect your fellow artists, even if you don’t like or understand their work. Respect other humans. Period.