THE 2020–21 RUTH EASTON NEW PLAY SERIES March 3, 2021
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THE 2020–21 RUTH EASTON NEW PLAY SERIES PULPPULP VERITEVERITE by Crystal Skillman March 3, 2021 “Five years ago, I began writing a series of pieces that examined activism in the U.S. Pulp Vérité came to me as a parable that uses my training as a photographer to tell this story. With all we are politically facing in this country—the earned criticism of our place in the world internationally— Pulp Vérité is a race against time. This play unfolds and unravels in startling ways. I hope it is a call to action.”— Crystal Skillman Playwright......................Crystal Skillman Director......................Kareem Fahmy** Dramaturg......................Megan Sandberg-Zakian Design consultant......................David Esler Apprentice Stage Manager......................Ashe Jaafaru Workshop Producer......................Hayley Finn Associate Workshop Producer...........Julia Brown Actors Hunter/Kel/Stage Directions.....................Latoya Cameron* Robin......................Meredith Casey Joy......................Latoya Edwards* Will......................Alex Esola* Pike......................Layla Khoshnoudi* Jamie......................Meghan Kreidler* Lesley......................Maggie Metnick* *Appearing through an Agreement between this theatre, the Playwrights’ Center, and Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States. **Member, Stage Directors and Choreographers Society A NOTE FROM JEREMY B. COHEN Jaime The past four years have felt like an unending string of conversations; discussing with friends and colleagues what actions we needed to take that day. As the world continues to shift, change, and “That morning. You didn’t come back. We found a message—that you were meeting reveal itself at an incredibly rapid pace, many of us are seeking the way to address these challenging someone from an interview, got an address to the cafe—someone we begged from the times and become part of the solution in a whole new way. Crystal Skillman is one of the great the hotel took us in a truck. We wandered the streets, the cut away houses, blasted like ... But theater artists at the center of those discussions. when we’d gotten there you were gone. We waited. We waited as long as we could for any word. Any information but ... We had to go. We were going home, I said no. No. The One of the great pieces of magic that happens around hives like the Playwrights’ Center is how fighting was only getting worse. We had no choice. Will pushing me on the plane, kept passionately writers advocate for one another. I see it the most at other playwright homes like New saying we’d go back, we’d go back but ....the whole country, looking down from the plane Dramatists, National New Play Network, and The Lark. Such was the case with Affiliated Writer Qui like it was closing up ... swallowing with you inside it.” Nguyen and Crystal. As much as Qui would talk about his own work, he’d talk to me all the time about their work together and how much he believed in her voice. So when a panel of her peers —from Crystal Skillman’s PULP VÉRITÉ selected Crystal to become a Core Writer, I couldn’t have been more excited to welcome her here. I only wish we were all sitting at the Center together so we could more viscerally experience the energy, vitality, and prescience of Crystal’s work together. One of my favorite dynamics to Crystal’s plays—and you can read about this more in the interview in this Dialogue—is how deeply she metabolizes the world around her, at each of its inflection points. You’ll feel it in the pulse of Pulp Vérité, because her antennae are so clearly attuned to the current spiritual and psychological zeitgeist. I often find artwork that seeks to “represent” the world a bit challenging because of its attempts to display total objectivity, which is a fallacy. Oftentimes that plays out in the theater, and the work can’t help but eschew authentic humanity in most of its character development. Crystal does the opposite: she starts everything with the pulpy heart, and moves outward as she sculpts the world of her plays. I wanted Crystal’s piece in the winter of our 2020–21 Ruth Easton New Play Series so we could be reminded of the sacrifice it takes to change broken systems. Together, we can add to the ever evolving set of world forwarding conversations. Jeremy B. Cohen Producing Artistic Director An interview with Crystal Skillman by Hayley Finn Hayley Finn: I want to start by talking about the title. The title say. It’s extremely awkward. He goes, “Trump wants to be actually used my visual eye. What also helped me deepen When I put all the pressure on one form, it was stressful encapsulates the content; the tone. How and when did you president.” That started as a joke and then it transformed. It my craft was I had tremendous people believe in me who for me. So that really helped me work better, create better come to name the play Pulp Vérité? followed all of those incarnations. The things that changed were playwrights. work, and be happier. and didn’t change are going to make people cry in reading this. Crystal Skillman: I had the opportunity to explore a new play There should be more playwright artistic directors because HF: How has writing for one medium helped the other with the Clifford Odets Ensemble Play Commission at the It’s a living, breathing document of what we’re going through they really see potential and understand a thing is a thing mediums? Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute years ago. This is in a lot of ways. Things here have changed for the worse. before it’s a thing. Qui Nguyen produced my play Geek. Josh where I came up with the idea of these documentarians. Things in Syria have gotten even worse. They are going Conkel did my play Cut with his play The Management. The CS: I think the forms of musical theater, comics, TV, Trump had just come into power and I was following what through this war on their own and a pandemic. We’re still people that had their companies put money into me were screenwriting are really economical. You have to use that was happening in Syria. watching an inhumane, international crisis happening. There’s playwrights. medium and tell that story that way. It helps you create better a lot of heartbreak between those two things. Pulp Vérité is a dialogue because you’re aware of the action that’s happening. I believed Hillary was gonna come into power and we were lot about the helplessness of Americans trying so desperately HF: So playwrights have helped you as producers and My first drafts are significantly stronger because I understand gonna start to work. When it didn’t happen, I thought about to help and what that means. dramaturgs. Are you interested in producing? beats much better than I did before. I used to write a whole what we’re drawn to in American society. I thought of Quentin scene when really all someone needed to do was cross the Tarantino; his influence on me as a writer, a filmmaker, and HF: You have the pull of what’s happening in Syria but also CS: I do have a dream; an initiative I would love to be a part stage. So the cause-and-effect, the turn of a scene, the tension an author. I thought of Pulp Fiction; the different narratives the relationships amongst these characters; how they’re siding of. Marsha Norman had this idea of a national playwrights of a scene, and how it works in each medium has been greatly moving together. with various factions of the collective. How are you thinking theater run by playwrights. I don’t see myself producing other enhanced. about the complicated friendships in your play? playwrights but creating a mechanism where it just doesn’t I realized when Trump came into power he was elected have to be as hard. There’s gotta be a better way to share HF: Coming from a visual background, how do you like to because of reality television. I started writing a play called Cut CS: It’s all in there. I’ve been praised for my character and develop; at least have people that can do that in a non- collaborate with directors? in 2012 about three reality TV show writers. The road we were development. I think it comes from being an outsider. I went systematic or gatekeeping way. From Tony award-winners to going down was clear to me. We weren’t aware of what was to Hartford Art School and Parsons School of Design. I was those just starting out—the amount of work you have to do is CS: I work with the director in service of the story—in terms of real anymore. We were living this alternate reality that was surrounded by other artists working with other artists. Being never gonna go away. You have to present your work in some my work, rewrites, and what isn’t clear. I understand clarity is being presented to us. around those relationships has always impacted how I’ve seen way that people can see what you see. not about exposition and exposition isn’t just about dialogue. the world. I was in Youngblood at EST in my formative years. It’s about beats and moments. Sometimes that involves Cinéma Vérité is the origin of reality television. I questioned We had this bond. I come back to that time because I felt I was getting very frustrated as a writer. I had been writing dialogue, sometimes it doesn’t.