Jacqueline E. Lawton
  • Home
  • Info
    • Artistic Statement
    • Bio
    • Awards and Fellowships
    • Affiliations
  • Writing
    • Upcoming Events
    • Previous Events
    • Plays
    • Productions
    • Commissions
    • Award Ceremonies
    • Publications
  • Advocacy
    • Appearances
    • Facilitation, Workshops, and Trainings
    • Access, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in the American Theatre
    • Gender Equity
    • Theatre and Technology
    • Theatre Action >
      • After Orlando
      • Climate Change
      • Every 28 Hour Plays
    • Testimonials
    • Additional Resources
  • Dramaturgy
    • New Play Development
    • Production Dramaturgy
    • Dramaturgy and Script Consultation
    • Additional Resources
  • Teaching
    • Qualifications
    • Curriculum Development, Theatre Arts Integration and Teaching Artist Training
    • Philosophy
    • Experience
  • Producing
    • ARDEO
    • On Stage with the Migration Series
    • Out of Silence: Abortion Stories from the 1 in 3 Campaign
  • Media
    • Gallery
    • Good Ink
    • Media Coverage
    • Interviews
    • Press Releases
    • Podcast & Video
  • Blog
  • Contact

Plays for Two: Editor Interview - Nina Shengold

3/23/2014

0 Comments

 
When I first learned that, Finals, Touchdowns, and Barrel Kicks, would be included in Eric Lane and Nina Shengold's latest anthology, Plays for Two, I read the email twice and sent it a small handful of friends to make sure that it was real. Then I walked over to my bookshelf and ran my hands over two beloved anthologies that have graced my shelves for more than a decade. The plays included in Plays for Actresses and Leading Women: Plays for Actresses II served as guiding lights of inspiration throughout grad school and even now. It was thrilling to think that my play would be in an anthology that might inspire an emerging woman playwright. Plays for Two is a unique anthology of twenty-eight terrific plays for two actors, by a mix of celebrated playwrights and cutting-edge new voices. Months ago, I had the pleasure to speak with Nina Shengold about her passion for Athol Fugard, her career as an editor, and her experiences as a playwright.
Picture
JACQUELINE LAWTON: Why did you decide to get into theatre? Was there someone or a particular show that inspired you?
NINA SHENGOLD:  My parents took me and my brothers to see plays in New York and London, where my dad taught in the summers, but the bug really bit when I was in high school.  I grew up in suburban New Jersey, and used to cut classes and take the commuter bus into New York to see Wednesday matinees.  The one that changed my life was Athol Fugard’s Sizwe Banzi Is Dead.  In the opening monologue, a photographer (brilliantly played by John Kani), extends his arm to an audience member, inviting them onstage to look at his photos.  My $5 Student Rush seat was in the first row, and he chose me.  Stepping over the threshold onto a Broadway stage, with this great actor’s hand holding mine, I felt anointed. 

In my senior year, seven friends and I formed a small theatre company as an independent study project.  We did plays by Eugene Ionesco, Tom Stoppard, Samuel Beckett, and Jean-Claude Van Itallie, plus an irreverent kids’ adaptation of Winnie the Pooh, which I wrote.  But I didn’t think of myself as a playwright till college, when I took a seminar with Arthur Kopit, a wonderful and inspiring teacher.
 
JL: Plays for Two is your thirteenth anthology. Tell us about how you became an editor.
NS:
A college acquaintance who worked as a book packager tapped me to edit a monologue book for Viking Penguin.  For my second Viking Penguinanthology, I asked Eric Lane to join me as co-editor, and we’ve been working together ever since.
 
JL: What is the process of editing a book? How do you determine the themes? How do you decide which of monologues, scenes and plays will be included?
NS: 
 Eric and I try to think of books that will be useful to actors, directors, writers, teachers and people who love to read plays.  We’ve been lucky enough to work with the same terrific editor, Diana Secker Tesdell, on all our books at Vintage.  We send her a book proposal detailing the book we’d like to create, and if it’s approved, we start soliciting plays that fit the theme (all-female casts, short comedies, plays for two actors etc.)  We also do a lot of cold reading, and ask our smart friends for recommendations.
 
One or both of us reads every play that’s submitted.  We each create a shortlist of plays we like, and then work together to winnow it down and fill in any gaps.  It’s important to us to have a good balance of plays by well-known and emerging playwrights, a variety of tones and styles, roles for minority actors, and other considerations like length and cast size. It’s like putting together a buffet dinner.  Pasta salads are great, but you don’t want 18 of them.
 
JL: What do you find most rewarding about being an editor? Do you have a surprising or interesting experience to share?
NS:
 The most rewarding thing, by far, is the electric response when a play really grabs me. This is especially true when I’ve already read hundreds of plays and am starting to gaze at the piles left to read with resentment.  No matter how burned-out I am, my heart beats faster when I read a play that excites me. 
 
But wise playwrights should note that editors DO get burned out.  At the beginning of a reading period, I’m eager to read, and am actively trying to fill empty slots.  Weeks and months later, both Eric and I already have more on our shortlists than we can possibly fit in one book, so the script I pick up has got to be different and better to make the cut.  Turn your script in before the deadline!
 
More advice from the editor chair:  Don’t send more plays than we requested, “just for fun.”  Keep your cover letter short, gracious, and to the point.  And if you want to stand out in the crowd, don’t send us a ten-minute play about two people meeting in a restaurant or breaking up in an apartment.  Not that you can’t write a GREAT first-date-in-restaurant or breakup play, but believe me, you won’t be the first.
 
JL: In addition to your work as an editor, you are also a playwright. Tell me a little bit about your writing process. Do you have any writing rituals? Do you write in the same place or in different places?
NS: I have much better work habits when someone has hired me than when I’m writing for myself.  A deadline is a girl’s best friend.
 
JL: Describe for me all the sensations you had the first time you had one of your plays produced and you sat in the audience while it was performed ... what was different about the characters you created? How much input did you have in the directing of that work?
NS: I was lucky enough to have several productions of my first full-length play Homesteaderswithin two years (at Capital Rep, the Long Wharf, and in LA’s Olympic Arts Festival.)  So I got to see very different casts and directors’ approaches bring out different sides of the same set of characters.  That elasticity still amazes me.  Sometimes you imagine a line or scene in a very particular way, and the actor brings something so different to the table.  It’s that volatility that makes playwriting different from any other form of writing.  With a screenplay, if you’re lucky, it’ll be produced once.  That actor IS that character, forever.  With a novel, each reader casts the characters according to her own imagination.  But playwrights get to see their creations walking around in different skins.  It’s a thrill.
 
JL: What advice do you have for up-and-coming playwrights?
NS:  Write as much as you can, read as much as you can, see as much as you can, learn as much as you can about every aspect of theatre.  The more you know about acting, directing, set design, lighting and everything else that happens on a stage, the better you can write for the medium.
 
Love your own work.  Be hard enough on yourself to keep moving forward, but don’t stamp out the spark.  There’s a lot of rejection in this business, and it doesn’t mean your work is bad.  It means the particular person making a particular choice didn’t choose it this time, for one of a million perfectly valid reasons that aren’t about quality.
 
And don’t take no for an answer.  If you’ve written a play you love, find a way to hear it.  Get friends together in somebody’s living room to read it aloud, do a staged reading, kickstart a showcase production.
 
JL: What next for you? Where can we follow your work?
NS: I just wrote a low-budget screenplay on spec and am trying to finish my second novel between paying jobs.  I have a website, www.ninashengold.com, which is sorely in need of updating. 


Picture
Click here to order your copy!
It takes two to tango—or to perform a duet, fight a duel, or play ping-pong. The two-character play is dramatic confrontation stripped to its essence. These four full-length and twenty-four short plays feature pairs of every sort—strangers, rivals, parents and children, siblings, co-workers, friends, and lovers—swooning or sparring, meeting cute or parting ways. In a dizzying range of moods and styles, these two-handers offer the kind of meaty, challenging roles actors love, while providing readers and audiences with the pleasures of watching the complex give-and-take dynamics of two keenly matched characters.
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    My Blog

    Picture
    I'm a playwright, dramaturg, and teaching artist. It is here where you'll find my queries and musings on life, theater and the world. My posts advocate for diversity, inclusion, and equity in the American Theatre and updates on my own work. Please enjoy!
    Tweets by @dulcia25

    Categories

    All
    Advocates For Youth
    ARDEO
    Blackbirds
    Dance Exchange
    Dc Theatre
    Diversity And Inclusion
    Dramatist Guild
    Gender Parity
    Intelligence
    Lions Of Industry
    LoTT
    Love Brothers Serenade
    Mothers Of Invention
    Musings
    Nnpn
    Noms De Guerre
    Nso
    Our Man Beverly Snow
    Plays For Two
    TCG
    Theatre Education
    Theatre For Social Change
    The Hampton Years
    The Inferior Sex
    Triangle Theatre
    Wizard Of Oz
    Women Artistic Directors
    Women Directors
    Women Dramaturgs
    Women Playwrights
    Women Stage Managers
    Women Theatre Critics
    Xx Playlab Festival

    Archives

    June 2020
    April 2020
    December 2019
    September 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    September 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    August 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    May 2012

    Reading List
    2am Theatre
    American Theatre Wing

    Americans for the Arts
    The Atlantic
    Black Girl Dangerous
    Colorlines
    Feminist Crunk Collective
    Feminist Spectator

    The Good Men Project
    Guardian: Theatre
    Guernica
    HowlRound
    Media Diversified
    The Nation
    NEA Art Works
    NPR Arts and Life
    NYTimes: Arts

    Opine Season
    The New Yorker
    The Paris Review

    Salon
    Theater Talks
    Think Progress
    WaPo: Theatre
    Works by Women

    Vox

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • Info
    • Artistic Statement
    • Bio
    • Awards and Fellowships
    • Affiliations
  • Writing
    • Upcoming Events
    • Previous Events
    • Plays
    • Productions
    • Commissions
    • Award Ceremonies
    • Publications
  • Advocacy
    • Appearances
    • Facilitation, Workshops, and Trainings
    • Access, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in the American Theatre
    • Gender Equity
    • Theatre and Technology
    • Theatre Action >
      • After Orlando
      • Climate Change
      • Every 28 Hour Plays
    • Testimonials
    • Additional Resources
  • Dramaturgy
    • New Play Development
    • Production Dramaturgy
    • Dramaturgy and Script Consultation
    • Additional Resources
  • Teaching
    • Qualifications
    • Curriculum Development, Theatre Arts Integration and Teaching Artist Training
    • Philosophy
    • Experience
  • Producing
    • ARDEO
    • On Stage with the Migration Series
    • Out of Silence: Abortion Stories from the 1 in 3 Campaign
  • Media
    • Gallery
    • Good Ink
    • Media Coverage
    • Interviews
    • Press Releases
    • Podcast & Video
  • Blog
  • Contact