Take Five! with 2018 Helen Hayes Award nominated writers and lyricists

A look, a memory, a word sparks an idea.  Characters emerge; they tell their stories, and from their voices a play or musical insists on being born. Then the hard work begins.

Playwrights and Lyricists responding:
Alexandra Petri, Deborah Wicks La Puma, Happenstance Theater, Karen Zacarias, Meg Miroshnik, Mollye Maxner, Morgan Gould, Nathan Weinberger, Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm.

(No time for a long read? Find nominees and shows using the Search box)

The Nominees	Take Five!
	Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm What inspired you to write Hooded, or Being Black for Dummies? Grad school. I was doing my MFA in Playwriting at Catholic University and had recently discovered Spring Awakening by Wedekind. I was inspired by this play and chose to write about my own racial awakening. Did the work take you in any surprising directions? It took me a while to reconcile the fact that I had actually written a comedy. I was so serious about the subject matter calling it a comedy felt dismissive. Which character did you worry about the most? Hunter. I pushed the Hunter character further and further, and I was unsure about how he would be received. What are you most looking forward to at the Helen Hayes Awards? I can't actually attend the award ceremony, but I consider DC my playwriting home so this nomination is huge. I'm also excited at a potential loss to my good frenemy Morgan Gould.
	Morgan Gould What inspired you to write I Wanna Fucking Tear You Apart? It's about a fat girl and her gay guy best friend. I had to do a lot of research for the project, because I am a fat girl with a gay guy best friend. Did the work take you in any surprising directions? I started writing the piece to rail on basic thin white girls - you know, leg warmers wearing, I went to NYU as an English major, and I carry a moleskin notebook...but as is almost always the case with me, I start writing from a place of rage at someone or something, and I almost always realize I'm the person I'm really mad at. The grief is mine. I guess I shouldn't be surprised about how playwriting works that way for me, but even so, it almost always surprises me. Which character did you worry about the most? I'm selfish, so I worried about Sam the most, the fat girl. But also, I do genuinely think that in the play, she's in the most harrowing position and she has the most to lose. A moment in the final production that you didn't envision while writing the play There were so many moments I loved that I hadn't envisioned, because when you're writing alone, what you can't envision is the tremendous gift the actors will bring to your work. I'm so so lucky to have gotten to watch Nicole Spiezio, Tommy Heleringer, and Anna O'Donoghue grace this place with their generosity and talent and humor. There is truly no way I could have imagined how incredible they would be when I was writing it, because how good they are is unimaginable. And I couldn't have imagined the amazing design/ production Studio Theatre and my fierce design team - Luciana Stecconi, Andrew Cissna, Ivania Stack, and Justin Schmitz created. It was a dream! What are you most looking forward to at the Helen Hayes Awards? Having a fist fight with Tearrance Chisholm. I'm gonna find him and thumb wrestle him til he weeps. (JK I love that dude - he's the BEST, can't wait to raise a glass with him and all the other amazing DC theater folk!)
	Mark Jaster for Happenstance Theater What inspired you to write Bon Voyage? Sabrina and I first visited this material in 2009 in a show produced by Round House called "Look Out Below!" with Karen Hansen, who is now the music Director for Happenstance Theater. We were inspired by the story of the Phonoautograph, invented by Frenchman Éduoard-Léon Scott de Martinville. We imagined the stunning novelty of first recording sound, and introduced a couple of eccentric clowns into the moment. The "Snowpocalypse" of that December allowed very few people to see it. Now that Happenstance is an established collaborative ensemble of 6 players, we chose to revisit the energetic period of late 19th century Paris together. Did the work take you in any surprising directions? We hoped to be surprised, and we were! We spent the initial part of the collaborative creative process trying on various characters. The six we created were very different from many of the first drafts we tried. Which character did you worry about the most? The creation of each character had its challenges, but we as a company create the characters we play, so we all got to worry most about our own. As Sabrina and I guided the process, we sought to strike the right balance of character energies given the ensemble's various skills and temperaments, and the most stimulating status structure of the potential relationships. A moment in the final production that you didn't envision while writing the play As creator/director/performers, we saw it all, but from the inside! We hoped, but had not envisioned how readily the audience would help create a rainstorm on the way to Paris. What are you most looking forward to at the Helen Hayes Awards? Celebrating a VERY BUSY year with our beloved company and the rest of the DC Theater community.
	Deborah Wicks La Puma What inspired you to write lyrics for Ella Enchanted? Ella Enchanted is one my daughter's favorite books, so I was delighted when Adventure Theatre and First Stage approached Karen and I to adapt it. Did the work take you in any surprising directions? For what is essentially a fairy tale, it surprised me how contemporary the issues of obedience are within this show. It takes real strength to be an independent thinker within societal (or magical) constraints. Which character did you worry about the most? We worried about characters from the book that we did not include in the stage adaptation, as was necessitated in creating a one hour telling of the story - we didn't want to disappoint any diehard fans! But we felt like we stayed true to the story even with a pared down cast of characters. A moment in the final production that you didn't envision while writing the play Working with brilliant director Mary Hall Surface, along with Michael Bobbitt's fantastic choreography, this show really came alive as never before. The puppet design was also incredible - one of my favorite moments was a flock of puppet birds (led by a phoenix) flying and singing over the audience "It's Like Magic". It really did feel like magic! What are you most looking forward to at the Helen Hayes Awards? Being a part of the family of DC artists - such a wonderful, welcoming, and talented community!
	Mollye Maxner What inspired you to write Still Life with Rocket? In autumn of 2015 I went to a talk by Stephen Jenkinson about death and dying. His words and stories raised many questions for me about presence, absence, holding on, and letting go. Around that time, a young child fell to her death while playing hide and seek one night on the side of a mountain. These stories kept a hold on me. Meanwhile, other threads entered the process. How do we mark humanity? What was "marked" as symbols of human-ness on the Voyager Golden Record in 1977, and perhaps more evocatively, what was left off of it? What in our human-ness are we willing to look at, reveal, admit? What do we tuck far away--and even disown? Through all of the idea-gathering, I was looking through a lens of tenderness and aggression--which led to family, boxing, dementia, memory, and the need for absolution from those unable to give it. Rocket was also driven by formal questions of the relationship between detailed visual installation and a kinetic performance experience. How does such an experience influence memory, story construction, and the unfolding of character? So somewhere in the intersections of all those threads, amid a commitment to a thoroughly collaborative creative process, lies the inspiration for Rocket. Did the work take you in any surprising directions? The entire journey of making Still Life with Rocket was one surprise after another. The cast had shifts for various life reasons; the context changed dramatically; the story flipped on its head repeatedly. (You wouldn't believe what it was at the first reading - but let's just say imaginary friends, parkour, prison...a totally different piece!) Delightfully--and often in surprising ways!--the initial threads all made it through the wild process and were alive and kicking in the piece when it opened. Which character did you worry about the most? Since we were writing the piece together within the rehearsal process, there wasn't much time to worry about anyone! The bigger worries were about story.....and in fact it was the work of each performer on character that helped us find our way through the worries of story. A moment in the final production that you didn't envision while writing the play Since we were making this piece together for the DC premiere, I was not the "writer" in the traditional playwriting sense. However, I'll mention three moments (of many!) that were beyond what I had first envisioned: Matt Nielson's composition of Tectonic; the first moment I walked into the loading-dock-turned-mobile-home; and the stars that filled the sky at the end. What are you most looking forward to at the Helen Hayes Awards? Reuniting with the "Rocket" team and celebrating the tremendous and inspiring DC theater community.
	Meg Miroshnik What inspired you to write Fickle: A Fancy French Farce? FICKLE is an adaptation of a 1723 play LA DOUBLE INCONSTANCE by the French writer Marivaux. It's a fun and funny farce with three meaty, hilarious roles for women. So, when Olney Artistic Director Jason Loewith and the director Eleanor Holdridge approached me with the idea to update the play for Olney audiences, I jumped at the opportunity! Did the work take you in any surprising directions? I connected immediately with the high-low humor of the Marivaux play that inspired FICKLE. It's a great mixture of witty wordplay and just super basic bodily function jokes. But as I started working on the adaptation, I was surprised to find the larger question of the piece--which I interpreted as "what is love anyway?"--resonating in a pretty deep way. The romantic pairings of the play are surprising--our happy ending involves the young lovers breaking up and marrying other people--and I think it ends up examining human attachment and narrative expectations in an exciting way. Which character did you worry about the most? Trivelin, played by the incomparable Marcus Kyd. In a total stroke of genius, Marivaux wrote a play about coupling with 7 characters. So, there was necessarily an odd person out and, in my version, that person is Trivelin. I loved the way director Eleanor Holdridge staged the last moment of the play: Trivelin is alone onstage after he and the rest of the cast have destroyed the set in celebration, wondering what comes next. That terror even in the face of a happy ending felt so human and relatable to me. A moment in the final production that you didn't envision while writing the play I *loved* the Olney production! I essentially wrote the play on that cast, so nearly everything came from them and was funnier and more alive than anything I would have envisioned. What are you most looking forward to at the Helen Hayes Awards? I'm just so excited to see all the love the Olney received in nominations! I'm a huge fan of the theater and it's wonderful to see it recognized!
	Alexandra Petri What inspired you to write your play, to tell my story? This was a love letter to the world of fanfiction. I love picking apart the traditional canon of classics and creating space for new stories inside them. I love Hamlet, but it's always struck me as delightfully odd that someone confronted with their father's murder would respond by staging a play about it. What Hamlet does is take a story and rework it so it's about what is going on in his life, and that was something I recognized from the world of fanfiction and that served as the jumping-off point for this play. I think we tend not to take stories that teenage girls tell about themselves as seriously as we take those stories when they happen to someone like Hamlet whom Literature tells us to care about a lot, and so it was fun to take a work like Hamlet and resituate it in the world of teenage girls writing online fanfiction. Did the work take you in any surprising directions? I learned a lot more about Abraham Lincoln's sex life than I expected! Which character did you worry about the most? Elsie! A moment in the final production that you didn't envision while writing the play I am still in love with Roni Lancaster's projections and the amazing detail of Lauren Chilton's set, which was basically just my desk from high school and I don't know how she knew. What are you most looking forward to at the Helen Hayes Awards? Celebrating with my fellow Welders and the other members of the DC theater community!
	Nathan Weinberger What inspired you to write this adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame? Lots of epic and nightmarish qualities, so it was perfect for our theater. It had been on “the list” for a long time. Did the work take you in any surprising directions? Synetic always takes things in surprising directions, but other than a prologue that we cut, I was most surprised to see that the original story stayed basically intact. Which character did you worry about the most? None. I knew what was going to happen to all of them. What are you most looking forward to at the Helen Hayes Awards? The hor d’oeurves of course!
	Karen Zacarías What inspired you to write Ella Enchanted? We were excited to examine the Cinderella story from a feminist point of view. Did the work take you in any surprising directions? It was very challenging but we were determined that our work honor the original book and not reference the movie. We were so relieved that our 60 minute musical adaptation with 7 actors was so faithful to the spirit of the 300 page book while still being very theatrical. Which character did you worry about the most? We worried about two book characters that were Ella's friends that we did not include in the play...but we condensed all three into a her single friendship with Prince Charmont which actually helped deepen that relationship and helped us better explore a love interest that was great friend first. A moment in the final production that you didn't envision while writing the play We were so lucky to work with the amazing director Mary Hall Surface, who brought such a playful sophistication to the piece. The entrance of the Giants (Huge Puppets on top of the actors heads) brought down the house every performance! What are you most looking forward to at the Helen Hayes Awards? Seeing and celebrating with friends the wealth of great theater and artists in this town. DC Rocks because our artists are great human beings with wonderful craft.