21 Jun Interview with #BAPF2018 Playwright T.D. Mitchell
We are excited to have playwright T.D. Mitchell present her new work at this year’s Bay Area Playwrights Festival! Join us for the readings of VRTU-L on Friday 7/20 at 8pm and Sunday 7/29 at 2pm.
We had the pleasure to sit down with T.D. Mitchell and talk about her creative process and inspiration.
When did you write your first play? What was it about & how do you feel about it now?
My first full-length play was Beyond the 17th Parallel, about memory and forgiveness among a group of Vietnam-conflict combat Army veterans reuniting during some of the worst fighting in the Iraq war. The process of researching and writing the play, over three years, took me on journeys both emotional and geographical I never could have anticipated and changed my life. The project was daunting, and I tried to abandon it a few times but couldn’t.
Which of your plays are you most likely to revisit?
I consider Queens for a Year to be unfinished. I intended to try rewrites in the production that followed its beautiful Hartford Stage premiere, but the 2016 election a month later suddenly shifted the American regional theatre into an appalling level of conservatism and complacency. The play was deemed “too feminist” and “too controversial” to get produced, for fear of upsetting corporate donors. To do rewrites outside the fertile, challenging dynamics of a rehearsal environment would be counterproductive, so the play remains, for me, in what is not its final draft form.
Which of your plays are you most likely to see produced?
Beyond the 17th Parallel has been almost produced – slated for production- six times. In 2006, the ideas within it were still dangerous in the era of blind patriotism and “you’re either with us or against us”. It’s no longer dangerous, but is still timely, still relevant.
The champion of the play who was my primary investor and intended to open it regionally and move it to Broadway was killed in a plane crash a few years ago. This play trapped in print on paper remains my greatest heartbreak.
What are your main influences for your writing?
I draw inspiration from many artists and thinkers who work in forms other than theatre. I am influenced by journalists and intimate stories with large themes. By composers, choreographers, documentary filmmakers, poets, scientists, archaeologists… I don’t have an MFA or any college writing training whatsoever, so the curse of that is I didn’t have traditional formal “influencers”, and the blessing of that is that I’m not bound by didactic chains.
Do you have an established writing process or do you approach each project differently?
My process remains the same in that it is consistently nonlinear and unpredictable. There is no predetermined order to how the story unfolds to me, even if the final result is very specifically, carefully structured. It begins as something fragmented and chaotic.
Which other playwrights have inspired you?
Caryl Churchill is a source of inspiration and amazement, as she continues to take risks and press against boundaries in her 70’s. The usual suspects have all inspired somehow– all the long dead white guys of the western canon. I find myself pushing back against that, looking to women and PoC to help me learn how we can get our storytelling to be intersectional and finally reflect marginalized voices outside of the white male construct.
What is your favorite play written by another playwright?
Don’t make me play favorites! It’s not fair!
What was your catalyst for writing VRTU-L?
There was not a single one; more an accumulation of many smaller ones. Previous research into PTSD led me to follow new use of VR treatments. My 2009 visit to Fort Irwin’s training village in the Mojave, Medina Wasl, was eye-opening. My work on television’s “Army Wives” on a recruiter storyline opened me to the sales tools and propaganda required to maintain ranks in an all-volunteer military.
What drew you to write about experiences of military service?
A conversation I had on a cross-country flight in 2003 with a Vietnam-conflict era combat veteran, whose son had unexpectedly joined the Army and was, at that moment, posted in Kuwait awaiting orders. His fear for his child, and palpable helplessness to protect him is what started me writing what eventually became my first play.
Each of the plays in your veteran’s series focuses on a distinct aspect of life in service: how did you decide what aspects to focus on?
I wish I could say it was consciously planned. When I was researching for Beyond the 17th Parallel, I realized after interviewing some female veterans who’d served in Vietnam that they needed their own play, because their stories were so unique, which became Queens for a Year. By the time I started the actual writing of that play, I knew that there would be a third play, but at that point I had no idea what it’d be about.
What do you see as the biggest positives and negatives of virtual reality technology?
I see mostly positives, but that is partly a function of my inherent optimism and moral beliefs– I don’t readily presume Worst Case Scenarios. Its potential for good is far-reaching and creatively, imaginatively thrilling. From its potential as an art form (which we’re only starting to discover– Laurie Anderson’s pieces at MassMoCA are a must-see), to a device for therapy and medicine, to take people to places they couldn’t physically visit, and its possibilities as an immersive teaching tool and skill-builder– the positives go so very far beyond entertainment and amusement.
But the negatives are largely unknown and potentially grave, and I’m not convinced the right questions are being asked contemporaneous to the technology’s advances and applications. We’ve already got a percentage of the global populace interacting in some way with screens more than with other humans IRL (In Real Life). There’s the danger of further social/political/cultural isolation. It’s also ripe for manipulation, propaganda, addiction, pornography (especially the pornography of violence), predatory marketing, pernicious desensitization/dehumanization, personal privacy infringements, unauthorized surveillance and data collection, and cyber warfare.
What are you hoping to learn from VRTU-L appearing in #BAPF2018?
Rehearsals and readings are always instructive in my rewriting a script into production-ready form. I don’t know what I’ll learn– the play and the process will teach me.
What do you want audiences to take away from your work?
I want them to laugh, to question, and to experience honest moments of surprise and empathy.
Which other #BAPF2018 plays are you most excited to see? And why?
I emailed Amy Mueller the moment I found out about the other plays to tell her how excited I am about everyone’s work. I’m sure that seems like a diplomatic, pat answer, but honestly, I’m in fantastic company and eager to first hear aloud all the other plays during the retreat, and then to see how they evolve into the first reading, and then evolve again into the second reading. I’m insatiably curious about other artist’s artistic process(es), especially those that differ from my own. Also, I see a commitment throughout the festival to diversity in characters and invoices, which is very exciting.
What do you consider the major milestones of your artistic career?
During this administration, sometimes it’s just getting up in the morning. Takes hella creative energy not to drown in despair or choke on rage. Can’t say that’s a milestone so much as a daily effort to continue to try to make art in this country, in this time.
What has been your most ambitious undertaking as an artist?
Starting on the latest blank page. Seriously, it all starts out feeling utterly impossible.
What’s next?
Writing an adaption of Beyond the 17th Parallel for film. A new play exploring American feminist identity and the global refugee crisis, which I started at a Yaddo residency this Spring. Two potential television pilots. Perhaps some magazine writing.
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