Interview with Thomas Sainsbury (Auckland, New Zealand)

What was your first experience of theater that converted you to wanting to pursue it as a career?

When I was nine I watched a production of Little Shop of Horror performed by my home town operatic society and became obsessed with the show and with carnivorous plants. I promptly went home and wrote a sequel (set in a school but with essentially the same plot). I read the script in front of my class and they loved it. My teacher then asked me to produce it for the school assembly that Friday. So I had three days to get an entire show together. I still have anxiety nightmares about that time. But I've been hooked on theatre ever since.

If you could have a drink with any dramatist (living or dead) who would it be and why?

Too many! Tennessee Williams. Because he writes so wonderfully and I reckon we would be pals. I feel he must have a sense of humor.

Why is theater important to you?

Because it's all about make believe and the imagination and stories - my favorite things. You also get to hang out with hot looking actors all the time.

If you could have one of your plays produced in any country in the world, which play and which country would you choose, and why?

Great question! Umm. My black comedy, Sunday Roast (a play about a farming Dynasty and their grotesque tastes), performed throughout Britain. Because I think they would really connect with it. I'd also like to perform my dancical (yes that's a musical where singing is replaced with dancing) in San Francisco and New York cos I reckon they'd like it there. 

Thomas Sainsbury (New Zealand) Born in Matamata Thomas moved to Auckland to do a BA at the university there. After choosing English Literature and Theatre as his major, he has been involved as a writer, director and performer for both university productions and the underground theatre scene. After graduating he formed the theatre company Fingerprints and Teeth Productions. With this company he has written and produced his plays Main Street, Basement and Caustic. In 2007 Thomas directed the University of Auckland Outdoor Summer Shakespeare, won Playmarket's Young Playwright competition for the fourth time, has represented New Zealand at the Biannual World Interplay festival in Townsville, Australia, and is having his play, Caustic, workshopped in the Adam Playreadings at Downstage.

Interview with Chisa Hutchinson (NYC, USA)

Can you tell me a story from your childhood that influenced the person and/or playwright you are today?

I was a scholarship kid at a fancy-pants private school where there was an art gallery.  You know, so we could have art like in the school.  And there was an exhibition there of the work of a photographer who documented poverty in America, people who lived in the projects, lived out of their cars, lived under less than humane conditions.  There was a picture of a black woman sitting next to a huge hole in a wall of her low-income apartment.  I felt like I knew her.  I felt like she could've been my next door neighbor on Avon Ave.  And I felt for her.  So when a girl behind me went, "Ew, why doesn't she just get that fixed?" I didn't know what to do with all them feelings.  Lawd lawd lawd, so many feelings.  That girl, bless her ignorant little heart, she didn't know any better.  But that's the point.  I knew all about her.  I had no choice but to know all about her.  Whatever she liked (Dave Matthews, The Princess Bride), whatever she hated (boys with long hair, dark nail polish, boys who wear nail polish), whatever confused, amused, or upset her... that was the "universal experience."  But my experience, the experiences of people like me... totally irrelevant.  I was standing right in front of her, but I was invisible. But I figure figure like this: people don't know what they don't know.  They can't know that you're pissed, hurt, offended to the point of wanting to boycott their company, that they're not being a good friend, that they're missing out on something special or potentially helpful if you don't make some noise.  So I'm making some.

If you can have a drink with any dramatist (living or dead) who would it be and why?

Any of Shakespeare's contemporaries.  Because they got the royal shaft.  Literally.

Why is theater important to you?

Because it's the only weapon I have.

What advice do you have for new playwrights?

Say yes to everything.  Until you can't.

Chisa Hutchinson (NYC, USA) award-winning plays, which tend to probe social issues, include She Like Girls, Sex on Sunday, The Subject, Dirt Rich, Alondra Wuz Here and Somebody’s Daughter among others. She’s been a Lark Play Development Fellow, a Dramatist Guild Fellow, a resident at the William Inge Center for the Arts a New York NeoFuturist, and a staff writer for the Blue Man Group. She is proud to be one of the newest members of New Dramatists. www.chisahutchinson.com

Nick Rongjun Yu - Shakespeare and Censorship in China

What was your first experience of theater that converted you to wanting to pursue it as a career?

I watched a play, Othello, by Shakespeare in the theater when I was in university in 1994, it is the first time I watched a drama in theater, I got a job in hospital as a doctor after I graduated from the university, but I quit the job and found another job in theater in 1995, during that period I watched many plays and then I decided to be a playwright and started to write play.

If you can have a drink with any dramatist (living or dead) who would it be and why?

Shakespeare, I am adapting a play from Richard III, and I have a lot of questions for him.

Why is theater important to you?

It is a good way to express myself. Also I can use theater to connect with people and share the thoughts.

If you could have one of your plays produced in any country in the world, which play and which country would you choose, and why? 

My new play The Eighth Day of the Week, in China, because it is a play about the period of 1959-1960 in China, but it can not be presented on stage right now.

Nick Rongjun Yu (China) is the most produced living playwright in mainland China and the Deputy General Manager for Shanghai’s only state-run theater company, the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre (SDAC). Since 2000, Mr. Yu has authored more than forty-seven works for stage and screen with performances in other countries as well as in China. He received Asian Cultural Council Fellowships in 2004 & 2007 to conduct research on cultural exchange programs in the USA and participated in the International Residency program at the Royal Court Theatre in 2008. He has also translated works from other lands, which have been performed in China and other countries. His plays have been presented in English and Japanese as well as other languages and dialects with performances in the United States, Canada, Japan, Singapore, Egypt, Austria, Romania, Italy, Turkey, Germany, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Macao. His works were published in Chinese, Japanese, English, and Turkish. As the manager of the Arts Theatre, Drama Salon, and D6 Studio of the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center, Mr. Yu has hosted more than four hundred projects on three stages in Shanghai, including Chinese and international productions, and has facilitated international tours for SDAC productions. Since 2003 as a dramaturg and producer of the SDAC, he also has co-produced several productions with theatre companies from abroad. Since 2005, he has been the Chief Director of the Shanghai International Contemporary Theatre Festival, which is an annual festival for theatre companies from all over the world.

"the arts shift souls" an Interview with Aditi Kapil

What was your first experience of theater that converted you to wanting to pursue it as a career?

I remember when I first fell in love with theatre. My mom and I went to a performance of Sam Shepard's 'Fool for Love' at this theatre in Stockholm that brought in English language productions. We got tickets through my high school, it was maybe the 3rd live play I'd ever seen, and the first non-musical. I think it was a brilliant production, I mean I wouldn't have had anything to compare it to. It blew my mind in a serious way though, nothing in my experience had ever prepared me for that live fighting, loving, naked, writhing in pain, old guy mooing in the corner, I'm not sure what's happening but we're all mesmerized... me, my mother, the entire audience. And something in the world had shifted by the end. Something I'd never known before, was possible in art. Anyway, that was the moment, but it took me a way long time to discover that there might be such a thing as a career in theatre, that's just not a natural thought for an immigrant kid growing up in Sweden.

If you can have a drink with any dramatist (living or dead) who would it be and why?

Tom Stoppard. Tom Stoppard, if you happen to read this, can I buy you a drink? I don't know, his virtuosity... the meticulousness of his craft... and you need that when you're going to break some realities, you need craft. I think I attribute the reality-breaking, accurately or inaccurately, to the East Bloc/Indian background, the idea that nothing has to be what everyone thinks it must, in fact it's our job to mix it up a bit, that sense that there's more to the world than you see at first viewing, I love that, I yearn for that. Also, I bet he'd be fun to have a drink with.

Why is theater important to you?

A healthy society needs to be in conversation with itself, a constant dialogue, a constant evolution of ideas, philosophy, humanity. That's the arts. Debate, free press, textbooks, etc., all of those things can inform and change minds. But the arts shift souls, connect us, weave us together. And for me theatre, having that conversation live in a room full of people having an common experience, gasping together, laughing together, feeding each other and the performance, is the most thrilling and uplifting variation. As a practitioner. I can palpably feel conversations starting, in our minds and hearts, and trickling out into our daily lives, and just a little bit the world shifts. Like that first time.

If you could have one of your plays produced in any country in the world, which play and which country would you choose, and why? 

Oh, wow. "Agnes Under the Big Top, a tall tale" in Stockholm, Sweden. In the US people very much see this play as a New York play because of the subway throughline, but in actuality for me it comes from growing up in Stockholm. My parents and my brother all worked for the Stockholm subway at some point, my dad was a driver, I'd hear him over the speaker, this one time he told me to pick up milk on the way home. I grew up on the blue line, took the train every day, the sliding doors, announcer v/os, passing lives, universe in "Agnes..." is Stockholm for me. I was also a home care worker in the summers, whenever I came home from college. In my blood, this is my Sweden play. To have it produced there would be incredible.

Aditi Brennan Kapil (Minneapolis, USA) is a playwright, actress, and director, of Bulgarian and Indian descent, raised in Sweden. Her play Love Person (Stavis Playwright Award), a four part love story in Sanskrit, ASL and English, has been produced to critical acclaim around the US. Her most recent play, Agnes Under The Big Top, a tall tale, was selected as a 2009 Distinguished New Play Development Project by the NEA New Play Development Program hosted by Arena Stage. Her latest work, the DISPLACED HINDU GODS Trilogy, consisting of the plays "Brahman/i, a one-hijra stand-up comedy show", "The Chronicles of Kalki", and "Shiv", premiered in repertory at Mixed Blood Theatre in October 2013, earning several end-of-year honors, including City Pages naming Aditi Artist of the Year for 2013. Current commissions include Yale Repertory Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, and South Coast Repertory Theatre. She is the Playwright-in-Residence at Mixed Blood Theatre, an Artistic Associate at Park Square Theatre, and a Core Writer at the Playwrights' Center. aditikapil.com

Interview with Phillip Dikotla Johannesburg, South Africa

Interview with Phillip Dikotla

Johannesburg, South Africa

Can you tell me a story from your childhood that influenced the person and/or playwright you are today?

I don’t really like talking about this but otherwise, I grew up in a poor family of four siblings and a single parent whom I love wholeheartedly (My Mother). Being the last born in the family, I didn’t know my father, he died the same year I was born, in 1990. We didn’t have a TV, just a radio and our voices which always told beautiful stories, about people I didn’t know, like my father, my grandfather and many other people, whom I had to imagine as their stories were being told. It was an automatic thing that I think helped me a lot with being able to imagine as I do today, when telling stories, as a comedian, and an actor. It helps me.
So with me being the last born in my family, I took upon myself one responsibility, which was to change the my family's situation, to make things better for myself, my family, and later my country, and hopefully the world. But even so, I later learned that I can’t change the world. I can only make a contribution, which I try to do with each and every story I tell. When I feel like my voice is not clear enough in a story, that the story has no reason to be told, I stop. I think that too influenced the kinds of stories I tell, and the comedy I do. Which is just being myself, and playing my role in society. Putting in my contribution. In honestly telling my stories, I believe, people see themselves, because we are not as unique as we think we are. So as hard as it is, I always try to reveal and give all of myself.
There is a lot that I still have to say and learn. Hopefully some other time.

If you could have a drink with any dramatist (living or dead) who would it be and why?

It wouldn’t be a dramatist, it would be my father. It would be nice just to talk to him. I feel like not knowing him has pushed me to gain a lot in my life. So it would be a pleasurable experience.

Why is theater important to you?

It heals me, it challenges my perspectives, and it makes me happy.

What advice do you have for new playwrights?

Write about things that you know the best. Write about things that speak to you. Anyway that also depends on what type of plays you want to do. What brought us here is not the same. So always remember what made you want to be part of this field/industry. Even though it might have changed as you grow and get wiser.

Phillip M. Dikotla is 24-year-old South African playwright, actor, and comedian. He is an Arts and Culture Trust Impact Award recipient for theatre 2012. He is part and cast of the Naledi Award winning production Sekwatlapa (2010), writer of the Zabalaza Festival Best production Skierlik (Standard Bank Ovation Award recipient 2013), and Nominee for best actor at the Zabalaza Festival 2013. He has worked with a variety of directors, and performed in different productions such as: Skierlik, Vuka Matchelle, Reconciliation, Matters of the heart, Dr Roto, Ordinary, Ngwanaka, Monnamolora, invasion 2.0, and Narrative Dreams, just to mention a few. As a writer he has written, Skierlik, Ordinary, Trekker (the story of Dimitri Tshafendas), Gae, The fatherland, David II, Buru (co-written), and currently working on his new play titled khukhu. As a comedian he continues to perform around South Africa.