EB: I was a serious modern dancer for many years in New York City. I trained at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts for both high school and college. Ever since I was a child, all I had wanted was to dance. It was my driving passion, but I had an injury – turns out it was a congenital defect in my spine – that eventually made it impossible for me to continue performing.

 

I was still very young and the thought of never performing again was really something I couldn’t handle. At the time of my injury, I had branched out into doing musical theater (to make more money – no one tells you modern dance doesn’t pay). I had been taking acting lessons (scene study and on-camera commercial classes, when my dance career received its death knell. I thought, “I don’t have to give up performing, I can be an actress!” Ha. Youth.

 

My goal was to get my training and then create theater dance pieces for myself to perform in. That way I would be in control of the movement and could work around my injury. One of the musicals I did before getting injured was “Carousel” at The Denver Center Theatre Company. I met a guy there who was a 3^rd year student in their acting program, The National Theatre Conservatory (a now defunct M.F.A. program that trained wonderful actors). With his guidance, I game-planned my future.  I would get an M.F.A. Then if all else failed I could always teach.

 

I chose a handful of theater programs to apply to – Yale, Harvard, UCSD, N.Y.U., A.C.T., Juilliard and of course the NTC. I was so naïve to the whole acting scene that I had no idea he had helped steer me towards choosing to audition for the top programs in the country. I learned my monologues and off to audition I went. Surprisingly, I was waitlisted at N.Y.U., but when I got into the NTC in Denver, I was thrilled. I trained for 3 years there and had a wonderful, magical experience. I fell in love with my husband, the brilliant Nathan Dean, doing a scene together in class.

 

After school, I came back to NYC to pursue my acting career. At the time, I had two good friends who had started their careers out as actors, but they had both had big success doing other things. They were Joe Mantello, who has directed The Vagina Monologues and Wicked. My other friend was Peter Hedges, who wrote What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? and Pieces of April. Both of them (separately) took me out for coffee to advise me on my new career.  Ironically, they both gave me the exact same advice – Don’t just act. Write. Direct. Teach. Create opportunities so you can always be working.

 

Not exactly what I wanted to hear having just gotten an M.F.A. in theater. But they were both smart and successful and I appreciated their candor. Turns out it would be the smartest advice anyone ever gave me. At my meeting with Joe, he told me about a cold reading series his (and your) theater company, Naked Angels, was doing every week called Tuesdays @9 where writers could bring in new work and actors were chosen from the audience to read it cold. No rehearsal.  He said to bring my headshot and introduce myself to Craig Carlisle, the guy running it, and that maybe I’d get to read something (as an actor) sometime.

 

Well, the 1^st night I went down there – the theater was on 17^th street – Kenny Lonergan was reading from a new play. Warren Leight was as well. You were probably there too. The talent in the room was unbelievable. I was nervous. I didn’t know anyone, but I really enjoyed the work. It was so inspiring. At the end, Craig announced he was starting a writer’s workshop and that anybody who was interested should come find him. My heart leapt. I had written journals ever since I was a kid and still had this whole idea I would create theater dance pieces, so I introduced myself and gave him my headshot and told him I was a writer.

 

A writer? Aside from my journals, I had only written short stories and poems as a kid. But that’s what I said and that’s how I started writing. I remember in the very 1^st class, we did an exercise called “Red.” It was a free association kind of thing used to generate writing a monologue. When we finished we read the monologues aloud to each other. Craig pulled me aside after class and said: “You have a voice.” Those four words had such an impact on me.

 

I had enjoyed the writing exercise – I felt a flow and freedom writing that reminded me of how I used to feel when I danced. At the time, I was doing this sad, meandering one-woman show downtown for a Vietnam Vet turned playwright. Later, I found out that this guy, who presented himself as an infantry soldier who had seen heavy action, had in reality sat for only a month or two in a Quonset hut (writing) far, far away from any front line action.

 

That guy and his blundering artistic expression became one of the many catalysts for The End of Nothing, which was my first attempt at writing a real play. By this time, I had written a few scenes and monologues in Craig’s workshop, but once I found the characters, the play just came flooding out of me. I was slowly coming around to the fact that acting wasn’t for me. I was very self-conscious and never felt as relaxed performing as I had as a dancer. There were way too many details to remember. And all those damn lines. But once I started writing, I felt like I was dancing again.

 

An area in my brain just opened up and things started to flow. I originally wrote The End of Nothing for myself to perform with another friend of mine – another ex-dancer – the wonderful actor, Tom Titone. We were going to have a public reading of our pieces we had written in the workshop. I was shocked when Craig, who had by then become a real mentor to me, told me I couldn’t perform in my own piece, because I’d never hear it and that was the whole point of doing the readings, to hear the play. I also was unaware that he had a pool of actors available from the Tuesdays@9 pool that he wanted to cast from – he cast T. Scott Cunningham and Dina Spybey and they were brilliant. Sitting in the audience and hearing the actors say the lines I had written – feeling the audience experience the piece – was really the turning point in my whole writing career. It became clear I didn’t need to perform anymore. And that’s when I decided to devote myself to writing full-time.

 

 

You were prolific in churning out these funny, dark, honest one-act plays that investigated troubled 'artistic' relationships.  In regards to The End of Nothing, was this play based on what we can all imagine -thanks to Black Swan, The Red Shoes and other damaged muse/mentor movies- was this play the output of relationships culled from the dance world or from writing or acting? Or were you less commenting on male/female dynamics in the creative realms and more exposing of male/female dynamics in a more general sense?

 

I really don’t know. I would say all of the above. Maybe? For sure the Vietnam Vet and his crazy monologue piece figured into it. I was young and still naïve, but not naïve enough not to eventually figure out his work was terrible. At first I thought it was okay. But what did I know? I had found the audition in Backstage. But as rehearsals progressed, it dawned on me he was more than probably a little crazy. Turns out he was. And yet I still performed the piece. I still did everything he told me to do, because that’s how I’d been trained as a dancer. To do what the choreographer tells you. That’s your job. To be the muse. And there were other interesting relationships I’d had with teachers and choreographers over the years – nothing like Black Swan – dance is never portrayed authentically in movies – but all of that was certainly swirling around inside of me.  Also, my father had passed away a year or so before, and I was still emotionally in a very sad place. I had written the poem that Owen reads at the end of play shortly after he died. I tucked it away in one of my journals and then when I was writing the play and searching for an ending, I remembered it. In a lot of ways writing this piece was very healing, because it became almost like a tribute to my dad. I know it sounds odd, but I felt like Owen’s triumph and strength at the end of the play was a coming to terms with my grief. It signaled that I could be strong again.

 

 

 

Dancers are by nature subservient. The whole hierarchy of a dance company is very parental. The choreographer is God and you, the dancer, are there to serve his/her creation. Your will becomes their will. You strive to achieve their vision. It’s not so much that Owen is dismissive of her abilities, it’s that she’s exploring. She’s not trying to do anything. She’s trying to find herself.

 

Expressing herself through dance feels good. She doesn’t care whether it’s right or wrong. She isn’t doing it with an end goal in mind. Again, it’s just discovery. And that mirrored my own path at the time. I was exploring writing. I wasn’t trying to make great art. I never thought Owen was toning down her creative self in that moment for Renny. She was just being honest that she wasn’t doing it for an end result.

 

I had also been steeped in artistic training from a very early age. And dance training is very cloistered. You really live a very closed off life. You have to work all the time on your craft if you want to be any good. And I went from school straight to my professional life. There was never a time when I wasn’t working. Once I left the dance world, I felt like my world exploded.

 

I think Owen’s reaction to the self-important nature of artists was in some ways my dealing with my own backlash – a way of reminding myself that not everything has to have artistic value. That sometimes you can do things just for enjoyment and that’s okay.

 

 

 

That’s right. You did the 2^nd reading of the play at EST with Peter Frechette – directed by Vivian Sorenson. God, you guys were hilarious. And then you did the first public performance with your ex-husband, Todd Weeks, who wasn’t your ex at the time. And you guys were fantastic too. About the play though, I won’t lie. It started as an attempt to write a vanity piece for myself, but as I said before, that intent quickly evaporated.

 

I wasn’t purposefully trying to be funny, that’s just how the play came out. My father’s death had such a profound impact on my life. I really, really did not want to go on without him. Writing this piece in many ways liberated me. So I guess it was a sort of declaration of independence, but not to prove that I was a writer. It was an unconscious effort to prove I could survive.

 

 

 

You mean was there ever a Renny? Sure. I think, as you say, we’ve all had a few dysfunctional relationships. For me, nothing quite as extreme as what’s portrayed in the piece. This piece thematically for me was about growing up. Listening to my own voice. Following my own vision. Owen may wear a trashcan at Renny’s bidding during the play, but by the end she’s triumphant. She’s found her voice and written a beautiful little poem.

 

To top it all off, she tacks on a not so meaningless title.   A title full of irony that proves she’s grown to surpass Renny artistically. I owe that ending to the director John Ruocco, who directed the reading at EST. I had written several endings for the play. In one Owen shoots Renny. John kept making me dig deeper. Telling me to sum up this story in a way that we’ve never seen before. He pushed me and pushed and pushed me until I found the simplicity of what remained the ending. I didn’t set out to write a cautionary tale about losing oneself in love, it just evolved.

 

 

 

As I said, I trained as a dancer from a very early age. And by the time I left the dance world I was sick of the insular nature of it. I had a love/hate attitude toward it. Looking back I was probably just very burnt out. I had seen so many dance concerts and downtown theater dance pieces and some of it would just leave me cold. You know, like I would scratch my head and go, “What am I supposed to take away from this?” So yes, I was questioning art. For sure. I was examining what does it mean to be an artist, because at that time I wasn’t sure.

 

 

 

I’ve always loved Brecht’s quote: “Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” But in terms of my own artistic path and my definition of art – God, that is a tough question.

 

When I was a child I took ballet, but my favorite memories are dancing around my parent’s living room.  I would play my father’s classical records – he had these fabulous recordings of Debussy and Manuel de Falla – and improvise elaborate dances because I had this great need to communicate.

I can remember writing these long, involved journal entries about art, and what it means to be a dancer and how dance was the most important communicative art, because expressing oneself without words was the highest artistic achievement one could make. I was a lofty 11 year-old. Where this need came from, I have no idea.

I have two sisters and we all shared the same experiences – took the same after school classes – piano, art, gymnastics, dance – and neither one of them became a dancer. One became an artist and the other a musician and then a film editor (my father was very creative. He had been a photographer and helped us make stop action super-eight movies). Why did we all choose such divergent paths? What is it inside us that propels us to create? And how do we choose what form that expression will take? I don’t know the answer to that right now. I need to think about my definition of art some more. I’ll have to get back to you.

As far as stage vs. screen – writing is writing. Story is story. Characters are characters. My plays have always been very character driven. I love to explore relationships. Most of my TV writing has been in the procedural genre because that’s the area I was lucky enough to break into. Thankfully, the procedural shows I’ve written for have great characters to play around with.

It’s just that writing for the stage and writing for the behemoth that is the commercial television entertainment industry are two very different things. When you write for the stage, there’s certainly more creative freedom in terms of how you can present a story. When you write for a TV show, there are rules and restrictions you absolutely must adhere to. Each show has its own unique template. That becomes a technical exercise – making sure you have the structure down.

And as far as the creative part – your job is to get inside the showrunner’s head. Write from that vantage point. When you create your own characters they speak to you. When you write someone else’s characters, you need to find a way to get into the same headspace so that the characters come alive inside of you and you can hear them. It’s tricky. In addition to that, TV writing is very fast paced and you have these ridiculous deadlines coming at you constantly.

So my long-winded answer is... What was the question again?

 

I think I just answered a lot of this in the previous question. Still, anytime there is an external force imposed upon your creativity it impacts you as an artist. The entertainment industry is a business. There are rules. Things you can and cannot do. So yes, I feel differently, but I still give my best creative self within the constraints I’m working with.

 

 

 

Hahaha. You mean you don’t remember me white knuckled in rehearsals, veins bulging in my neck? God, I was a nightmare early on in my career. Not now, but in the beginning I found the whole rehearsal process experience excruciating. I had so much trouble letting go and allowing my words to be interpreted through other people’s brains. Everything had to be done exactly the way I saw and heard it in my head or I would freak out. I couldn’t stand to watch actors going through their process. I didn’t understand that it was a process.

 

It’s like I had forgotten what performing was like – how you have to build a performance, layer by layer. When I think back to the poor actors and directors I worked with back then. Not that I couldn’t be helpful. There were times when I pushed and the results were good. But, God, I was such a pain in the ass. Nathan, my husband, who has performed and directed many of my plays – including giving an utterly spectacular, career defining performance of Renny along with the winsome Penny Balfour in a brilliant production directed by Craig Carlisle – used to always try to remind me in rehearsals, when I had unreasonable expectations about how things should be going, that 1) it was a process and 2) it was a collaborative process and 3) that I needed to relax. That everything would eventually come together.  Of course, he was right.

 

Sometimes, an actor would make a connection, or the director would give a note and everything would align. Even so, it took me years to learn how to navigate the development process. I’m grateful for my theater experiences – they taught me to be patient and have faith – to let go and trust the art of collaboration. Which is probably the greatest lesson I learned from working in the theater. It’s a lesson that’s served me well.