An Interview with Terence Anthony

An interview with Terence Anthony

When did you write your first play? What was it about & how do you feel about it now?

The first play I remember writing as a teenager was about a young mixed-race kid whose white mother used to run with the Black Panthers in the 60s. I don’t remember what actually happened in the play, but there were a lot of poetic monologues about politics and identity. Luckily it was never produced.

Do you have an established writing process or do you approach each project differently?

James Baldwin described the act of writing as trying to find out something which you don’t know, and what you don’t want to know, and that’s always stuck with me. I’m always jotting down ideas I want to explore, and the ones I keep coming back to and fleshing out tend to be the stories or characters that make me the most uncomfortable.

What has been your most ambitious undertaking as an artist?

My play Burners. It was ambitious for everyone involved in the production and the entire creative team did amazing work. It’s a sci-fi dystopian play, and even though it’s a two-hander with one set, there were a lot of cues, effects and costume and make-up challenges. With the script, I created a lot of future slang, and a large backstory for the world, the political factions and the recent history. I even wrote and drew a comic book that was a stand-alone prequel to the events in the play; we sold them at concessions. I really got to embrace my nerd roots and dig into the kind of world-building that I obsessed over as a kid reading The Lord of the Rings and Dune.

Which other playwrights have inspired you?

James Baldwin. Blues for Mister Charlie was the first play I can remember reading, and I was like, “they can talk about race like that in theater?” The way that play explored white supremacy and divisions within the black community seriously blew my young mind.

What is your favorite play written by another playwright?

I don’t have a favorite, but a play I saw recently that’s been stuck in my head is Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview. For me it brilliantly skewered the reality of white audiences watching Black stories on stage, but also the way we as black artists can confine ourselves to the types of stories we write for theater audiences. I left the theater that night and told my friend, “There are no more black plays to write after this.” I got over it, but it took like a week.

What was your catalyst for writing The House of The Negro Insane?

The seed for the story was planted a few years ago when I read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The book is about the first “immortal” cell line and the African American woman who provided those cells without her knowledge or consent. There’s one chapter in the book where the author investigates what happened to Henrietta’s oldest daughter who was committed to the Crownsville State Hospital (founded as the Hospital for the Negro Insane of Maryland) and died there in 1955. It’s a small part of the book but I became really intrigued, especially after I discovered Crownsville was one of a number of psychiatric institutions built in the early 1900s specifically to house African Americans. We don’t hear much about post-slavery/pre-Civil Rights black history, and as I researched these institutions I found many connections to how our communities are policed today and the prison-industrial complex. I knew this was the next play I wanted to write.

What are you hoping to learn from The House of The Negro Insane appearing in BAPF 2019?

It’s great to hear your play in front of an audience, and I’m looking forward to having two readings during the festival because each audience reacts a little differently to certain elements. There’re some changes and character development I want to explore from the last reading of this play, and I can’t wait to see how Bay Area audiences react to it.

What do you want audiences to take away from your work?

I want audiences to come away feeling like they’ve gone on an incredible journey and spent time with characters they’ll never forget. I want the work to challenge their assumptions in some way, through the lens of some common themes that run through my work: race, class, trauma, violence. But I like to embed themes into a larger narrative, rather than build a script around an idea or message, so having the audience connect with the story is my number one goal.

Which other #BAPF2019 play are you most excited to see? And why?

Honestly they all look amazing, it’s very cool to be connected to all these talented folks. But since I have to pick: FLEX. We need more basketball plays! And any play that references the GOAT Cynthia Cooper is on my must-see list.

What’s next?

I’m writing another play set in the past. I didn’t want to write another historical piece afterThe House of the Negro Insane but after three years living under a racist president and rising white nationalism, this felt like a story I really needed to get out. It’s set in 1865, during the chaos and backlash that followed the abolition of slavery in Texas. The protagonist is a woman who escaped slavery to live in Mexico ten years before emancipation. She returns and travels across the state on a mission of vengeance, accompanied by the bedraggled drunk who used to be her master and the old Mexican woman who taught her how to shoot. It’s like The Odyssey meets Django Unchained.