INTERVIEW: Jump into ‘The Pool’ at the New Ohio Theatre
Photo: From left, Elise Kibler and Rebecca S’manga Frank star in Is Edward Snowden Single? by Kate Cortesi and directed by Kate Bergstrom. Photo courtesy of Isaak Berliner / Provided by Everyman Agency with permission.
The Pool, a pop-up theater project, is now playing at the New Ohio Theatre in New York City, promising a trio of plays running in repertory and showcasing work from a variety of playwrights. This year’s edition features Is Edward Snowden Single? by Kate Cortesi and directed by Kate Bergstrom, The Ding Dongs or What is the Penalty in Portugal? by Brenda Withers and directed by Daisy Walker, and Superstitions by Emily Zemba and directed by Jenna Worsham. Performances run through Nov. 20.
Cortesi, whose works over the years include plays about women, young people, liars and the American psyche, has crafted a story about a pair of interracial BFFs in a crisis of integrity, according to press notes. The play features two actors performing 19 roles. Withers is the co-founder of the Harbor Stage Company, and her play deals with a surreal home invasion and the cycle of violence that fuels the system of private property. Zemba, whose work has been staged by First Floor Theater and Local Lab, has created a show featuring eight actors who explore the topic of terror, both personal and national.
The Pool initiative is meant to create a sustainable model where playwrights lead their own processes, bypassing the slow gatekeeping of the theater industry, according to press notes. The project began in 2017 with a trio of plays at The Flea.
Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Cortesi, Withers and Zemba about their respective shows. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
What inspired you to write this story?
CORTESI: The first theater I saw that actually made me want to write plays was the highly virtuosic one-woman and one-man shows I saw on the Lower East Side in college. Sarah Jones. Danny Hoch. Roger Guenveur Smith. I was dazzled by those actors’ powers of transformation. The characters I met in their monologues were folks I recognized, from cities I’d lived in. So, I started out by copying them. I wrote my first play at age 19 or 20, a monologue play called Telephone. (Everyone in the play is on the phone. This is the last piece of new theater where the landline featured so prominently.) My new play, Is Edward Snowden Single?, is a return to form, but instead of being a one-woman show in monologue, it’s a two-woman show in dialogue. I hadn’t seen a show work that way before; I wanted to see if it could be done.
WITHERS: I was raised to treat others how I’d like to be treated. While I remain a fan of that golden rule, it’s hard not to notice the trouble it can get you in, especially if everyone isn’t playing by it. My play, The Ding Dongs, is a look at the limitations of civility in the face of aggression and an attempt to make sense of mischief makers.
ZEMBA: The first scene of my play, Superstitions, is actually inspired by a real conversation I overheard at a coffee shop in New Haven. A young woman was overexplaining various superstitions to what sounded like a foreign exchange student. I couldn’t see them from where I was seated, and I started to make a lot of assumptions about who these two people were and what brought them here together for this bizarre public conversation. You could say assumptions are another kind of superstition. Much of the DNA of this play came from that overheard conversation, and my own question of, ‘What are we afraid of, and why?’
How has The Pool project helped get your vision on stage? Has it been a nice journey bypassing “the slow gate-keeping of institutional theater”?
CORTESI: Is Edward Snowden Single? is a fun enough read, but when the actors get unleashed, it’s wild. One of my actresses calls it riding in the backseat of a convertible with your best friend, top down, going 100 miles per hour. By bringing the play to life, The Pool is letting me show the audience how this play really feels. Like a volcano. A volcano in a convertible. Metaphors: mix and match ’em!
WITHERS: I’ve been fortunate to develop much of my work at amazing regional theaters, including one I help run on Cape Cod. Sharing plays more widely usually means getting into the pipeline where it begins — NYC — an expensive prospect, both in terms of time and money. The Pool has made something that seemed out of reach possible — and delightful! I’ve been so inspired by the talent and generosity of my fellow artists and hope this model will continue to empower playwrights for a long time.
ZEMBA: Superstitions is a big play! Eight actors! Many locations! Some pretty wild and weird theatrical tricks. You can only learn so much from table-reads, and I was ready to get this play up on its feet — now. It has been such a moving experience watching my incredible cast, director and our brilliant Pool design team rally around this story and fully commit to my vision of the world. I find being both playwright and producer on this project really empowering. I feel like my brain is working at maximum efficiency mode, and I have been able to make smart and thrilling decisions about the play.
Do you feel that the pandemic and the events of the past two years have changed theater?
CORTESI: They’ve certainly changed me. I think I’m more open, more grateful, less cynical. We’re still seeing how it’s changed the institutions of American theater. It certainly feels exciting to be able to offer artists a playwright-led model to get their work up. I hope we see a lot more of that. Artists empowering themselves and one another, and teaching institutions what theater can be, instead of the other way around.
WITHERS: I certainly hope theater has changed in the last two years, as it has in the last 2,000, in response to the real moment it’s charged with investigating. I think theater’s greatest gift is its constant reminder that things change. For better or worse, nothing lasts forever, and theater gives you the perspective to make the most of that reality — to savor the shifts, or anticipate them, or learn their lessons.
ZEMBA: I can definitely feel a change in the air. Our lead producer, victor cervantes jr, introduced a beautiful term to our production process: grace. I think as a community we are all finding ways to make room for more grace in our work and working dynamics. Grace, and trust, and compassion for every person’s artistic vision, time and capacity.
Is playwriting a satisfying outlet for creativity?
CORTESI: Profoundly so.
WITHERS: Strong yes. It’s the opportunity to create a whole world on a page, and even the way you build that world has no real rules.
ZEMBA: Playwriting is magical. It’s a place to empty out all the strange, funny, existential questions I have bouncing around in my head — without pressure to answer them. Also, I just love to laugh. To make people laugh. To laugh, and then cry, and then laugh again. Playwriting allows me to do that.
When did you first fall in love with theater?
CORTESI: As a little kid, putting on plays in living rooms with friends for the parents. I have kids of my own now, and the great constant of human nature is at some point at every big holiday, the grown-ups will be assembled into chairs and forced to watch the kids put on a show. This is an incredibly primal impulse. Maybe I should turn the question around on everyone who doesn’t make theater: When did you fall out of love with theater, hmmm?
WITHERS: My best friend in kindergarten flubbed her line [in] the school play, and I remember us scrambling to make it seem like things had actually gone as planned. It made me feel like a spy and a teammate. I’m sure that was the moment.
ZEMBA: Every summer vacation my family would catch the annual Agatha Christie mystery at Acadia Repertory Theater on Mount Desert Island, Maine. I loved those shows. Blackouts. British accents. Murder. My favorite part was intermission, when the audience would gather on the lawn and debate in hushed tones about ‘who dunnit.’ It all felt so spooky and delightful and absurd, and I knew that I needed to find a way to create that kind of experience myself.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Pool, featuring works by Kate Cortesi, Brenda Withers and Emily Zemba, runs through Nov. 20 at the New Ohio Theatre in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
