Playwright stays radically open
Recently, the playwright Rachel Bublitz posted on social media that she was afraid about her world premiere, “Ripped,” opening at Z Space. This is despite having previously had her work produced at Custom Made Theatre Company, PlayGround, Exit Theatre and PianoFight, among other local and national companies. “I am just realizing how unsafe the internet will be for me after ‘Ripped’ opens with reviews and opinions maybe all over the place and how the hell do playwrights deal with that???”
If that sounds disarmingly open and vulnerable, that’s characteristic of Bublitz’s use of social media. She posts about how many plays she submits to be produced. (Last year, she racked up 500.) She posts about rejections she gets. She posts when she gets things done and when she doesn’t.
So of course Bublitz, who is now based in Salt Lake City after living in the Bay Area for 11 years, would share her anxieties about “Ripped,” which tackles the murky sexual encounters of UC Berkeley student Lucy (Krystle Piamonte) with both Bradley (Edwin Jacobs) and Jared (Daniel Chung). The show runs through June 15 under the direction of Lisa Steindler at Z Below.
The Chronicle chatted with Bublitz about what was important to her in crafting a story about sexual assault and what she gets out of being so transparent about her process on social media. Q: What inspired “Ripped”? A: It was my second semester at San Francisco State, and I was taking a workshop with Peter Nachtrieb. He had us write lists of all these things, like really long, exciting words, short words, character names, subjects or themes we were really interested in, and he’d give us a minute for each one, and we’d write as much as we could down. He was like, “Now you have all these things to pull from when you’re looking for new stories, and you can go back to these.” It was around this time that I started realizing that my process involved starting with theme more than character. So when I was looking over the list of things I had generated in his class, I realized that consent and sexual assault and rape were something that I was really interested in, but I didn’t want to approach it in the sense that I see it so often done. Q: What patterns do you notice in the way we typically tell stories about sexual assault? A: I think it’s so often like, “A scary guy in a bush!” or, “This is wrong,” and it’s really obvious. It doesn’t make us question what we believe. That’s what I was more interested in, in making a situation be murky in order to start a conversation or in order to let somebody have time and space and reflect to think about it for themselves. Q: One influence on the script was Jon Krakauer’s “Missoula,” about a series of date rapes on a college campus. Any other nonfiction inspirations? A: “This American Life” did an episode, “Anatomy of Doubt,” about rape. It talks about victims not responding in the way people think victims should respond . ... There’s so much of people freezing when they’re in situations, and it’s like, “Oh, if she had just fought back . ... And (“This American Life”) looks at it from why that person couldn’t react. There’s medical reasons why, sometimes, if you’re in a situation, you don’t run or scream. You can’t physically do that . ... They talked about trauma and how oftentimes, it’s like a break in the brain, and so our brain tries to put us in that situation again and again. There’s this repetition of, “Let’s try this again. Let’s get drunk again. Let’s do X, Y and Z again and see if now my brain can make sense of it.” Q: And that totally happens in the play! A: Yeah, it does. Q: When I see stories of men sexually assaulting women, it always feels very fraught how the writer allocates virtues and flaws between the two — often like deck stacking. Was that something you thought about in writing “Ripped”? A: Likability is definitely something that comes up a lot in talk-backs for this play. … Every audience almost always loves Jared so much. And then a lot of audiences really sided with Bradley as well. It kind of is staggering to me. Q: Wait, so nobody ... A: There was a time when nobody would side with Lucy, and it just kind of broke my heart. I think maybe a little bit more awareness with #MeToo, in the readings since then; it’s gotten better, and it’s gotten more even. We’ve been looking at it a lot in rehearsals, in making sure that she doesn’t come off as crazy or damaged. …. She’s still a person. We found a few ways that were really fun where she could be smart and have funny little flirty moments that were endearing. But it’s definitely something that took me by surprise in the first readings. Q: But you never had to make your male characters more likable? A: No, and actually so many of my drafts have been, like, how can I make them less likable! Q:I think of you as incredibly open about your process on social media. What are the different kinds of things you share? A: I try and share almost everything. Sometimes I get a rejection, and I won’t share specifically where the rejection came from because I don’t want to seem catty or anything — because I also appreciate rejections. Q: What does that give you, when you share that a play you submitted got rejected? A: I often will share if I get a really great rejection. The worst rejections are the ones you never hear from again, the ones that are just radio silence. Then you get rejections that are just, “Dear playwright,” and it’s a form letter. Then you get rejections that, the person writing it actually read your play, and you can tell, the way that they write it. Then there are rejections where they gush about your play, and they loved it, but there’s not space for it this time. So rejections really range. The ones that really loved your play or got it — I feel like those should be celebrated just as much as acceptances. Q: Tell me about your “submission mission.” A: I acted in college for my bachelor’s degree, and I directed a little too. I wanted to get back into theater, and I didn’t know how to do that with two young kids . ... I’d always been interested in writing, and I thought, “Oh, this can’t be that hard. I’ll try this instead.” I was wrong. It was very hard. But I also loved it. It moves me more than acting and directing did. Even now that my kids are older, I don’t know if I’d go back to those. I feel so strongly that, especially then when they were so young, that each moment that I spend on writing is a moment I’m taking away from them, so it can’t be wasted. I have to push myself as hard as possible, because they’re making sacrifices, too, so it has to be worth something. … So I started challenging myself to submit a lot. Every year it just got bigger and bigger. I think last year I had over 500 submissions.
Megan Cohen, who’s also an amazing Bay Area writer, started this. She was telling me her goal each year is to get 100 rejections in a year . ... It kind of changed the perspective of what you want to go for. Once you submit a play, you don’t have any control over whether or not it gets picked. But you do have control over how many scripts you send out . ... You can’t say you have a goal of getting a production a year, because unless you’re producing your own plays, you don’t have a say in that. Q: Where does that urge to be so open and transparent come from? A: I think partially it’s that I work really hard, and I’m proud of that.