plays

A builder was belly-up at my bar. He had just gotten off work and was transferring scribbles from a notebook to his computer.

“Oh! I love those waterproof notebooks!”

“Yeah, me too. They’re great for construction.”

“I think they’re great for writing poetry in the rain.”

I’m sad to say his reaction was a long, puzzled stare, so I got him a beer.

This is me, &

this is my work.

Even when I can’t find a way into a conversation--

my writing is my way into the world.

It exists somewhere between lofty and blue collar—

where poetics meets vernacular.

I examine the grotesque nature of people, their values, their class, and the spaces they hold sacred.

Born in the Midwest, I learned how to communicate with folks with an “Ope,” or a “Just gonna scoot past ya.” A Midwesterner rallying against groggy Midwest sensibilities, who upon learning how to speak, has never shut the fuck up.

This is juxtaposed to my formal years on the West Coast in Seattle, where I learned to be completely original, just like everyone else, layering my insecurities with a Filson jacket, an autonomous bubble, and a supercilious attitude. 

Like the bar where I host the man with the notebook and so many others who come and go, an activated space can either help or hinder depending on approach. We live our lives dependent on places we call our spot— good or bad, we define ourselves by those places. When writing the full-length, Til Death Blooms True, a blank page became the sketchy illustration of a towering silo on tarnal land. This silo is a place of nourishment when full of grains, but it is also the lookout where farmer, Jubal Hooker, centers his obsession, and where he ultimately meets his death.

In my thesis play, The Brutal Fucking Death of the Drunkard, The Immigrant, The Durable, The Juggernaut; “Iron” Mike Malloy (IMM), the yard hydrant in center stage is the focus of the play; providing water & hope for both Ragamuffin & Ragabiscuit, but it is also used as the tap handle for the murder trust bar, the meter in the Cabby’s car, and the switch for the electric chairs.

My plays contain death and poetry… it seems someone is always dying, and someone is always speaking in verse. While I don’t think the act of death is something truly poetic, I do believe that it is best dressed in beautiful language. As Ragamuffin & Ragabiscuit state in IMM, “Sometimes cruelty is easiest to reckon when you put on a show.” But these two speak mostly in poetry, so it’s not surprising they would say something like this.

This use of poetry is pervasive in my full lengths, in my short plays, and most often in monologues. It is both a reflection of how I view my own inner thoughts, and the fantasy I wish to see in the world. Of course, I have no problem with text messages, and DMs, but who doesn’t want a little more poetry in their life.

Like the folx I’ve encountered in the bars I’ve worked in and the cities I’ve lived in, my characters lack a sense of moderation but imbody strong values buried beneath a hardy exterior. The characters in IMM, the Proprietor, the Undertaker, the Cabby, and the Chemist, all represent what I see in the world today— death, medicine, education, and lateral mobility all in service to capitalism. I wrote these semi-allegorical characters to give a sense of play to my Xennial (xenial?) anxiety.

The reality is this: every character and story I write is an extension of myself-- my neuroses, social class, perpetual heartbreak, and genuinely sardonic take on the world in which I exist. Everything I experience is in constant conflict with itself. Where my plays imitate life, my life imitates plays.

Coming to playwriting after years of writing creative nonfiction, I find my work draws heavily on my own experiences, as well as pulls from history and true events. I try to apply the engines of nonfiction to my plays in attempt to see what truths live between what is fact and what is fiction—to examine what sits between my side of the bar, and the side of the bar with man with the notebook.

In my full length A Perfect Day Away, I drew from my own life to dramatize the grief I felt over the loss of a neighbor, and the small gestures I’ve examined for answers ever since. What started as a twelve-page list of things I like, became an essay, and then grew into a full-length monologue, which finally became a two hander. Til Death Blooms True, was inspired by the Kansas Locus plague of 1874, and IMM  is based on the events inspired by the murder of the titular character.

My plays can make an audience hungry, but I do believe any good experience should come with a snack of some kind. In my short YOLO, Rolos!, Nate leaves a funeral procession to buy snacks and to use the Rolos as a manifestation of grief over the loss of my fathers. In my play Hurts Donut, Billy and Harold have their first donut day since the beginning of the pandemic, and realize the ways in which I, the writer, have taken advantage of life’s small pleasures.

So, I suppose I find myself on both sides of the bar; there I am serving up, as best I can, something to help ease—to wash down the drudgery of the day-to-day, and there I am too, a socio-holic consumer trying to construct the next idea, the next story, the next situation, and world.

Just like my own sensibilities, my work is in crisis with where it fits in. A collage of both my notebook and the notebook of the construction worker. Building something poetic in the rain, kind of soggy—half drunk, slanging pints – existing somewhere between cornfed and sushi satisfied, a little bit cocky, and way too self-aware to pretend it doesn’t know.