Sharp Theater Bulletin

SHARP THEATER BULLETIN

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PLAYWRIGHT’S PERSPECTIVE THE X-FACTOR NOT-KNOWING Kirk Lynn on fatherhood and how it impacted Let's talk about sex. “If nothing was true, everything was possible.” the writing of the play. Adam Greenﬁeld on the work of Kirk Lynn. FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

DEAR FRIENDS,

How honest are we about sex? The Kama Sutra of Vtsyyana is a sacred Hindu text composed about eighteen hundred years ago. It was ﬁrst published privately in English by an erotophile named Sir Richard Burton in 1883 and began to appear in pirated publications around the same time that Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams. When Burton died, his wife reportedly burned most of his private erotic literature collection. As the most recent translator of The Kama Sutra, Aditya N. D. Haksarhas, points out, most English-speakers only know this ancient text via marketed “Illustrated” publications that highlight the notori- ous descriptions of copulatory positions that actually comprise only about one twentieth of the original work. A fairer summary would characterize it as a broad survey of sexual and social relationships between men and women. I lay out this bit of world literary history for you to come clean about my own way into Kirk Lynn’s fascinating, insightful, and moving story of a man’s messy journey from marriage to fatherhood.

I didn’t know much about Kirk’s play when we did a Superlab reading of it last year. Frankly, I didn’t know much about the ac- tual Kama Sutra either, not that this ancient text has anything to do with the play, really, other than to orient us. So when the ﬁrst scene started off with a bit of smartly rendered sexual role-playing, I will confess, I found myself pleasantly titillated (and intrigued). But I soon understood I was in the hands of a playwright wise and brave enough to understand that titillation is only the entry point into sex. The premise behind the role-playing Carla and Reggie undertake asks them to reenact scenes from their sexual histories. And their motive is not just to get off, but to expose themselves, to share their deepest fears, shame and pas- sions with each other. We see the unnerving, liberating effects of their courtship indirectly in the friendship that Carla is able to form with Reggie’s audacious, ex-ﬂame friend, Tony. Honesty turns out to be the great leveler.

Midway through the ﬁrst act, the play introduces a parallel story about Reggie’s rebellious daughter Bernie and her new boy- friend, Sean. Reggie seems helpless in the face of her anger and recklessness. And where is Carla? In the second act, this story takes over and the once-fearless, impetuous Reggie turns into a stereotype of an autocratic father in the face of his daughter’s sexual awakening. Tony re-enters the scene and the emotional undercurrents of the two acts and the two time periods collide. Sex opened up gateways between Reggie and Carla, but has shut the locks between Reggie and Bernie. Or has it? Once tongues are unloosed, it becomes clear that sex hasn’t been the issue at all. What has been missing has been honesty and time: the time both Reggie and Bernie have lost with Carla. And as the play reaches its climax, maybe it merits a somewhat humorous comparison to that ancient Hindu text: the search for truth assumes many positions. And the over-arching principle that guides both the search for truth and for pleasure is mutuality: "Whatever things may be done by one of the lovers to the other, the same should be returned by the other."

I have barely touched on one of the most remarkable aspects of the play, and the most palpable evidence of the sure-handed skill and experience of its author. The two time frames of the play live side by side so naturally and it makes its shifts clearly and theatrically, without fuss. But in the process it also emphatically dramatizes how alive time is for these characters. All time seems fully present in the play, and hence all truth too. We ache for the characters to discover this too, we know it hovers just there for them, like the ghosts of characters that haunt their memories. And when they begin to, it feels inevitable yet still sur- prisingly affecting.

TIM SANFORD ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

The Sharp Theater Bulletin is generously Special thanks to the funded, in part, by the PETER JAY SHARP FOUNDATION LIMAN FOUNDATION. for its generous support of this production.

2 PLAYWRIGHT’S PERSPECTIVE

I’m a member of the writer’s cult that craves early mornings. The more I thought about the possibilities and dangers of 5:00 AM, 4:30 in my most maniacal phases. 4:00 is too early this performance, the vulnerabilities and intimacies, the more for me, but I only know because I tried. I wanted to move this warm-up exercise into my day’s main work. I decided to write a play about a couple attempting to Quiet. Solitude. Discipline. Darkness. Stubbornness. Stillness. share this experience with one another as a means of binding themselves together in intimate knowledge. There are lots of ways to wake up. I love strong, French-press coffee, an ice cube in it so I don’t have to wait for it to cool. Then, pretty quickly after that idea, my daughter was born. And I usually wake up my writing with some small project or The mornings went right out the window. My wife and I exercise I can noodle around with in the ﬁrst 5, 10, 15 minutes entered a world of perpetual morning. Everyday was 5AM it takes to get my brain cooking. The Austrian writer Thomas all day long. Everything was just beginning. Everyone was Bernhard, who trained as a pianist, called these small projects always just waking up all the time. All we all wanted to do ‘ﬁnger exercises.’ was lay around and cuddle with one another. It was heaven.

For a while I kept a list of everything I ever believed in my That goes on for a while. life. Cats were girls and dogs were boys. I would grow up to become a barber like my father and marry my mother. There Then, when my daughter was just approaching her ﬁrst is one solitary sin listed as unforgivable in the Holy Bible and birthday, as a ﬁnalist or a runner-up for the Herb Alpert I had committed it. Award in the Arts, I was given some time at the MacDowell artist colony. I didn’t want to be away from my daughter for More recently I started trying to write the smallest and too long. My wife, Carrie Fountain, is a poet. She deserves simplest recipes possible that would create some kind of to write as much as I do. Maybe more. So I have to balance performance. I call these recipes, “Plays without Words, my travel against our family and her work. I decided to without Actors, without Anything,” in imitation of Louis- go to MacDowell for just a week. The rest of the writers at Ferdinand Céline’s “Ballets without Music, Without Dancers, MacDowell thought I was crazy! But in that very intense week, without Anything.” Here’s one: newly motivated to make my time away matter, I drafted Your Mother’s Copy of the Kama Sutra. It was not quite the play I A Simple Room had imagined writing before my daughter was born. Instead it came to contain a lot of my thoughts about being the father of a daughter. Empty out one room of your house, if you have more than one room. If not, use a large cardboard box. This will be People say crazy shit to the father of a daughter. They say your simple room. Spend as much time as you can in the different crazy shit to the mom. But over and over again, men simple room. You may do anything you normally do, but and women both expressed to me that when my daughter if you do it in the simple room you may only bring in one was a teenager I should want to lock her up. To protect her? To item at a time. You may bring a chair into the simple room protect me? To protect her future partners from me? It got me for sitting. You may read a book in the simple room, but thinking about how a grown man should talk to his daughter then no chair, no lamp. Read only during the day. You may about sex and intimacy. What had I learned from my wife and eat in the simple room, but no plates, no cutlery. Spend as all the women who had in some sense helped me grow up? much time as you can in the simple room. You may write in the simple room. Bring a pencil, the walls will have to be Now my daughter’s three years old, and I have a six month the paper. You can bring a camera into the simple room to old son, too, who’s just starting to sleep through the night. take pictures of the walls and to get your writing out of the My mornings are coming back to me. I can’t wait. I almost simple room. You can perform a play in the simple room. always want to be home. And when I’m there, I want to go to If your play has no set and no costumes and no props you bed early, in anticipation of an early rise and an hour or two can invite in an audience, one person at a time. of strong coffee and work before somebody wakes up and needs something. Another one of these plays consisted of the idea of recreating your entire sexual history, good and bad, with and “on” a partner. KIRK LYNN JANUARY 2014 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

KIRK LYNN lives in Austin, TX with his wife, the poet Carrie the University of Texas at Austin. He was the USA Jeanne Fountain and their children, Olive and Judah. Kirk writes and Michael Klein Fellow in 2011 in Theater Arts. Kirk wrote plays, generally with the Rude Mechs theater collective. the ﬁrst draft of Your Mother’s Copy of the Kama Sutra at He's one of six artistic directors for the Rudes, whose the MacDowell Colony in summer of 2012. He is a Texan and new work, Stop Hitting Yourself, is at LCT3 in January and likes to hunt and ﬁsh and camp and tell jokes with his Dad, February of 2014. Kirk is the Head of the Playwriting and who knows a lot of jokes because he's a barber. Directing Area in the Department of Theatre and Dance at

3 IN THE DIRECTOR’S CHAIR

ANNE KAUFMAN is an OBIE Award-winning director who has directed She is a recipient of the Lilly Award, the Alan Cherokee by Lisa D'Amour (Wilma Theater); the co-world premiere of Schneider Director Award, Joan and Joseph Smokefall by Noah Haidle at South Coast Repertory and Goodman Theatre; Cullman Award for Exceptional Creativity, and and Somewhere Fun by Jenny Schwartz at the Vineyard Theatre. Other several Barrymore Awards. She is a Usual Suspect production highlights include Detroit (Playwrights Horizons), Belleville at NY Theatre Workshop, an alumna of the Soho (NYTW, Yale Rep and upcoming at Steppenwolf), Slowgirl (LCT3), Maple and Rep Lab, a current member of Soho Rep’s Artistic Vine (PH, Humana), Tales from My Parents' Divorce (Williamstown, The Flea), Council, Lincoln Center Directors Lab and The This Wide Night (Naked Angels, Lucille Lortel Nomination for Best Direction), Drama League, a founding member of The Becky Shaw (Wilma), Stunning (LCT3), Sixty Miles to Silver Lake (P73 and Civilians, and an Associate Artist with Clubbed Soho Rep), God's Ear (Vineyard, New Georges), The Thugs (Soho Rep) and Thumb and New Georges. the new musical We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Yale Rep).

CASTING ANNOUNCED

MAXX BRAWER NY THEATER: Don’t Go Gentle (MCC Theater). FILM: Twelve. WILL PULLEN NY THEATER: Marie Antoinette (Soho Rep); Scarcity TV: "Are We There Yet?," "Law &Order: Criminal Intent." (Rattlestick). TRAINING: Syracuse University.

ZOE SOPHIA GARCIA NY THEATER: La Ruta (Working Theater). TRAINING: UC- CHRIS STACK NY THEATER: Marie Antoinette (Soho Rep); Killers and Other Berkeley, Actors Theatre of Louisville. Family (Rattlestick). TV: "One Life to Live," "As the World Turns," "Blue Bloods," "White Collar." REBECCA HENDERSON NY THEATER: Too Much, Too Much, Too Many (Roundabout); The Whale and The Retributionists (PH); Red-Handed Otter SARAH SUTHERLAND FILM: Shut Up and Drive, Innocence, Pretty Perfect. TV: (Cherry Lane); The Collection/A Kind of Alaska (Atlantic). TV: “The Good “Veep.” TRAINING: Tisch School of the Arts ETW. Wife.”

FAREWELLCOME

The gang at Playwrights Horizons bids a fond, tearful fare- But the hanky we waved at the back of Alec’s U-Haul we well to Associate Literary Manager Alec Strum who, for love, used to dust off his chair, excitedly welcoming Sarah moved to sunnier and more western skies in January. From Lunnie to the fold. While Alec was packing up boxes in 2008-2013, Alec was an invaluable member of our literary Brooklyn, Sarah Lunnie was loading a van in Kentucky. department. A cohort, a co-conspirer, a prince and a pal, Having spent 2008-2013 in the Literary Department at Alec brought a powerful generosity, imagination and in- Actors Theatre of Louisville, ascending the ranks from sight to every page of every script he encountered during Literary Fellow to Literary Manager, Sarah contrib- his time here. He’s sipping mojitos at some beach café in uted to six seasons of the celebrated Humana Fes- San Diego now, approximately 2,851 miles away, but he tival. Sarah, though you may ﬁnd that a walk down will always be a part of the family. 42nd is less palliative than the banks of the Ohio, and though we may have a smaller selection of bourbon, you’ll ﬁnd the pizza’s better and we’re happy as clams that you’re here.

BACKSTORY THE X-FACTOR

When asked why it is so interesting to write about sex, playwright formed in Athens during the fifth century BCE spared no limit in Wallace Shawn observed, “Sex is still shocking. Conflict is built their exploitation of sex and other bodily functions; to the Greeks, into the theme of sex because people’s desires are often at the subject of sex was profoundly funny. Aristophanes, “the Fa- cross-purposes.” Conflict, the very essence of drama, makes ther of Comedy,” wrote the most famous surviving sex come- the stage an ideal space to explore and perform the myriad dy of his day. In Lysistrata (411 BCE), the eponymous heroine faces of human sexuality. By tracing the ways in which the- convinces the women of Greece to barricade themselves in- ater has treated sex, we can track some changing cultural side the Parthenon and withhold all sexual privileges from views of sex through history. their husbands until the men abandon the Peloponnesian War. A battle of the sexes ensues, and to demonstrate the Sex has taken center stage as far back as ancient Greece. For afflictions of rampant priapism, the male characters don large, the Greeks, the subject of sex belonged to the lower form of erect leather phalluses. Ultimately, of course, they capitulate to Comedy, rather than the higher form of Tragedy. The comedies per- their wives’ demands. » continued on back cover 4 THE AMERICAN VOICE NOT-KNOWING

Perhaps the world’s most obscure guru of actor training, noteworthy that, more often than not, articles written about Stella Burden is among some circles the most legendary. The them tend to begin with questions: “What makes a genius?” details of her biography are hazy and too weird to be true, (from a review of Requiem for Tesla, 2001); “What is an idiot?” but we do know that after decades of teaching in the States (Pale Idiot, 1996); Have you ever been to one of those strange she expatriated to South America to found an academy in the parties…? (Cherrywood, 2004); and “What is history?,” this jungle. Save for an enigmatic manual for acting students and last one from an article about Kirk's 2001 adaptation of a catalog of physically hazardous exercises, we’re left with Greil Marcus's Lipstick Traces, in which the author wrote the mere fragments of “the other Stella” (as she was known) following sentence about punk rock, a sentence that to my and her version of “The Method,” which she called “The mind also describes the Rudes' idealist-over-nihilist mindset: Approach.” “The music came forth as a no that became a yes, then a no again, then again a yes: nothing is true except our conviction In 2008, the Rude Mechanicals, the shape-shifting ensemble that the world we are asked to accept is false. If nothing was company based in Austin, created a play about Stella. Written true, everything was possible.” by Kirk Lynn, The Method Gun centers on a group of Burden’s followers a decade after she disappeared: student-disciples The situation of The Method Gun, in which an absent guru abandoned by their leader. For nine years, the group has leaves a group of students searching for a path, strikes me meticulously, dutifully rehearsed a drastically abridged as an entryway for Lynn's writing, not just his work with the version of A Streetcar Named Desire (minus Blanche, Stanley, Rude Mechs but the plays he's made on his own. How Much Stella and Mitch); but now the company is frayed and drifting, Is Enough? (2011) is built entirely out of questions posed by left practicing these unorthodox acting techniques without its performers about how we attempt to create lives of value. a guru. Accustomed to believing there’s a known path to Major Bang (2005) is a tightly-wound inquiry into our 21st greatness, the ensemble is cast into uncertainty about century culture of fear. And in The Jinn (2005), a couple on the where they’re headed or what they’re even pursuing. “I have cusp of divorce is given a chance to see all the possibilities no idea how to act,” one character says. “I don’t mean on of how their lives might have otherwise unfolded. Each of stage—although that becomes a bigger and bigger mystery these reflects a yearning for freedom from the assumptions every time I show up at the theater—I mean—I have no idea we've unavoidably, inadvertently accumulated along the way how to act in my life.” They had come to rely on Burden’s towards being grown-ups, a longing to slough off the brush authority; like “The Method,” imparted by Adler (the more that keeps us from seeing with open eyes. The Animals (2011) well-known Stella) “The Approach” presents itself as the centers around a couple who have decided to excise what's one correct way. But it’s in her absence that the actors create unnecessary in their lives, to rid themselves of the objects something beautiful—a breathtaking, daredevil theatrical they don’t need and live freely like wild animals in their feat, performed at the end of the play, that they could only suburban home. “What about we just get rid of everything have made themselves. and start over?” Carlo barks. “I’m talking about starting over in my heart. … We’re living like robots. The alarm clock buzzes In 2010, playwright Adam Szymkowicz interviewed Kirk Lynn: and we get up to flip the little switch on the coffee maker and “If you could change one thing about theater, what would it dial in the perfect shower. But for who? Not for our bodies. We be?” Kirk's response: “I am casting a magical spell over all only take care of our bodies so they can push down the pedal true theatres to protect them from experts. The moment an in the car and punch the buttons on the keyboards where we expert enters a theatre, or the moment someone becomes an work. … Marissa and I are gonna start our lives over. We’re expert while inside a theatre, he or she will be transported to gonna try to live right by what we think ‘right’ means.” a classroom, or a lecture hall, or a marketing firm, or anywhere in the world where an expert is truly needed or desired. In Your Mother's Copy of the Kama Sutra, a couple creates a This magical spell will ensure that only novices, beginners, ritual to eradicate the hang-ups and shame they've amassed children, wild animals, lunatics, lovers, penitents, addicts, in their sexual histories; when, years later, some teenagers hobbyists and deeply dedicated artists can be in the theatre. have entered the picture, they find themselves struggling to The mystery is in exile in the presence of an expert. It’s only in keep them from falling into the same traps. “Let's not kid the presence of a student that the mystery can reveal itself.” ourselves,” Tony says to Bernie. “Your dad's not trying to protect your body from boys. He's trying to protect that (Tony One can't take stock of Kirk’s playwriting without first pokes Bernie's forehead) from that (pokes Bernie's forehead pointing at his longtime collaboration with the Rude Mechs, again). Finding a way to escape isn't the deal for you. You where he's a founding company member, resident playwright, need to find a way to stay.” In the landscape of Kirk's plays, and one of six Co-Producing Artistic Directors. A company of the toughest knots are the ones we unwittingly, inevitably tie about thirty committed actors, designers and directors who for ourselves when we rely on answers we've found in false swap roles with each show, the Rude Mechs have since places. In the cosmology of his plays, and in his process of 1995 concocted an idiosycratic and ever-surprising roster of making them, when we let go of what we think we know and works, mostly written or adapted by Kirk Lynn, self-described stare into the face of what we don’t, we can expand to meet as “a genre-defying cocktail of big ideas, cheap laughs, and the possibilities opening in front of us. dizzying spectacle.” Each of the 20-something original plays they've made defies categorization, employing a style and structure determined only by itself; though I'm not sure it's ADAM GREENFIELD useful to find any thematic link among the company's works, DIRECTOR OF NEW PLAY DEVELOPMENT what's immediately apparent is that each project seems born of a wide-eyed spirit of inquiry, of a curiosity that doggedly strives to stay untainted by cynicism. It's noteworthy that five of the seven paragraphs that make up their artistic directors' Leadership support for the New Works Lab is generously statement begin with the words “We are lucky.” It's also provided by the Time Warner Foundation. 5 SAVE THE DATE MONDAY MAY 5 2014 GALA 2014 I N T H E BEGINNING HONORING FOUNDING ARTISTIC DIRECTOR BOB MOSS WITH HOSTS David Hyde Pierce & Mary Testa For information, visit www.PHnyc.org/support-us/gala-2014 or call (212) 564–1235 x3143

PERFORMANCE CALENDAR YOUR MOTHER'S COPY OF THE KAMA SUTRA SUN MON TUES WED THURS FRI SAT POST-PERFORMANCE MARCH 28 29 DISCUSSIONS 7:30 PM 7:30 PM PPDs with the creative team have been scheduled for the following dates: 30 31 APRIL 1 2 3 4 5 2:00 PM 7:30 PM < 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 2:00 PM 7:00 PM 7:30 PM TUESDAY, APRIL 1 WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 2:00 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM < 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 2:00 PM SUNDAY, APRIL 13 7:00 PM 7:30 PM Following the matinee

We hope you can take part in 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 this important aspect of our < 2:00 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 2:00 PM play development process. 7:00 PM 7:30 PM

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 Indicates post-perfor- 2:00 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 2:00 PM < 7:00 PM 7:30 PM mance discussion

27 28 29 30 MAY 1 2 3 We recommend Kama Sutra 2:00 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 2:00 PM 7:00 PM 7:30 PM for audiences aged 16+. 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 2:00 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 2:00 PM 7:00 PM GALA 2014 7:30 PM 11 2:00 PM 7:00 PM

6 HELPFUL INFORMATION

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BOOK YOUR TICKETS NOW FOR YOUR MOTHER'S COPY OF THE KAMA SUTRA

Written by KIRK LYNN Directed by ANNE KAUFFMAN

MARCH 28–MAY 11, 2014 Playwrights Horizons Peter Jay Sharp Theater

This is the ﬁfth of six productions in the 2013/14 Season. #KamaSutraPlay

BACKSTORY THE X-FACTOR CONT'D FROM PAGE 4

But sex was not to remain the exclusive province of comedy. By the Re- wrote a lurid paean to anarchy naissance, playwrights were exploring an expanding range of sexual and and hedonism called What amatory experiences that traversed both comedy and tragedy. Shakespeare the Butler Saw (1969), which distinguishes himself with the astonishing comprehensiveness of his treat- delighted and appalled audi- ment of sex. From the freshness and exuberance of A Midsummer Night’s ences. “Sex,” Orton noted, “is Dream and Twelfth Night, in which characters discover love only to reckon the only way to infuriate them. with the realities of desire and its consequences, through the tormented Much more fucking and they’ll sexual chaos at the core of Hamlet and the hints of same-sex relationships be screaming hysterics.” Not in the Sonnets, culminating in the exalted afﬁrmation of marriage in The long thereafter, Oh! Calcutta!, Tempest—Shakespeare’s complex and multifarious treatment of sex intro- Kenneth Tynan’s avant-garde duced an unprecedented amount of truthfulness to the theater. revue of sex-related sketches, became one of the longest run- Such adventurism sputtered to a halt over the next few centuries as West- ning productions in Broadway Cover art for album of Kenneth Tynan's Oh! Calcutta! ern theater failed to evolve toward a greater degree of openness and hon- history. esty. A new age of social conservatism and Victorian reserve banished sex to the realm of inference and suggestion; sexual content onstage was With sex no longer a subject of censorship and outrage, the contemporary unthinkable. So it is hardly surprising that the few beleaguered sex plays theater has succeeded in allowing human sexuality to ﬁgure prominently that did emerge from the early modern period exposed the sham of sex- in outward behavior and motivations onstage. In recent years, we’ve seen ual morality and its consequences. Schnitzler’s La Ronde and Wedekind’s playwrights moving towards even greater interiority. Grasses of a Thousand Lulu plays numbered among these and, most notably, Wedekind’s Spring Colors (2013), Wallace Shawn’s lyrical odyssey of exotic sexcapades, has a Awakening (1891) criticized the sexually oppressive culture of nineteenth decidedly narcissistic bent. With its arresting, provocative title, Kirk Lynn’s century Germany and contained scenes of homoeroticism, rape, abortion, play evokes all these qualities and more, but Kirk turns the focus inwards sadomasochism and suicide, all involving young adolescents. to a frank and intimate character portrait that inhabits a space of its own.

The latter half of the twentieth century witnessed an outpouring of new works deeply invested in exploring and celebrating sexual themes. James Rado and Gerome Ragni’s musical Hair (1967) gloriﬁes sexual freedom KARI OLMON and polymorphous desires. Across the ocean, English playwright Joe Orton LITERARY RESIDENT