Interview with Jenny Schwartz, Author of GOD’S EAR
When I read the first draft of Jenny Schwartz’s GOD’S EAR, I felt the excitement that happens when you know you are encountering a major new playwright. The story of a young couple whose marriage begins to unravel after the death of their young son, the play was constructed in part from the juxtaposition and […]
When I read the first draft of Jenny Schwartz’s GOD’S EAR, I felt the excitement that happens when you know you are encountering a major new playwright. The story of a young couple whose marriage begins to unravel after the death of their young son, the play was constructed in part from the juxtaposition and repetition of cliché and idiom. Jenny was using this most prescribed language to tell a story of remarkable emotional depth, and in this way GOD’S EAR struck me as a play that could only be written now, from and for our times.
From her gorgeous adaptation of the Electra story, DISTINGUISHED BEAUTY ELECTRA, to her hysterical and original CAUSE FOR ALARM, which was lauded by critics when it premiered in the NY Fringe Festival, Jenny is fast distinguishing herself as one of the most original and exciting playwrights of her generation.
The Vineyard invited Jenny to develop GOD’S EAR in an ongoing process that spanned two seasons. GOD’S EAR was then produced by the acclaimed downtown theatre company New Georges last April, and now comes full circle to The Vineyard stage in an enhanced production in association with New Georges. The Village Voice called Jenny, “A playwright to reckon with,” and Time Out NY called GOD’S EAR, “Tremendous… a rare piece of total theatre.” We agree, and we can’t wait to share GOD’S EAR with you.
Jenny took time from a playwriting retreat with Sundance at the Ucross Foundation, to email with me about her longtime obsession with language, her unique writing practices, and how her training as a director informs her writing.
– Sarah Stern, Associate Artistic Director
The text of GOD’S EAR draws at times upon a vocabulary of clichés. Can you talk about what interests you in contemporary language?
I’m always thinking about the chasm between what we are thinking and feeling, and what we are able and willing to express through words. Along these lines, I’m endlessly fascinated with our unavoidable reliance on cliché, as well as our unconscious adherence to socially prescribed modes of behavior. I’m interested in the way we express ourselves using regurgitated and borrowed language, both privately and publicly. On the one hand, I find our use of cliché sad, annoying, and infuriating, while on the other hand, I see tremendous beauty and hilarity in this strange shared language that we pass on and on and on. (Please excuse my use of the pronoun “we”; I do hate to speak for anyone other than myself.)
The characters in GOD’S EAR, particularly Mel, are constantly bumping up against the limits of language to express the emotional places where they live. Can you talk about the relationship between language and emotion in your plays?
With GOD’S EAR, I wanted to deal with the subjects of grief and estrangement in a way that felt honest and emotionally connected; the barrage of language that makes up the play is fueled by and grounded in the characters’ emotions and intentions. Mel experiences a great deal of fury as she expresses her feelings and experiences through language and finds herself with no other vehicle than cliché.
Although the play’s plot and language – as well as some of its characters – are absurd and not realistic, the actors have absolutely approached their characters and the text in ways that are real and connected, while attending to the text’s strict rhythm and musicality. So I guess I work inside-out and outside-in at the same time. I started writing GOD’S EAR from an organic, emotional place. Then, I worked the language to try to create a structure to support the emotions, and a palate of words with which to work.
Your writing process involves typing the play from the beginning each time you sit down to work on it. How does this practice help you?
I think my process of typing the play from the beginning over and over again helps me to figure out a formal structure that supports the emotional landscape. When I get too formal, I usually feel like I’m taking a wrong turn. It also helps me to get the language into my body, and to make writing more of a physical act – it takes a lot of energy to get it down on the page. I think my plays do have their own logic, so retyping helps me follow the logic and see what I am making.
You rely on rehearsals with actors to help you move forward when you are writing a play. How does working with actors help your process?
I definitely depend on the rehearsal process to help me understand the play. I need to see and hear the text in time and space to be able to figure out what I’m writing, and then I can finish the play. Working with Anne and the actors has helped me enormously. Together we figured out what the play was about, and I shaped the text as a result of that work.
In addition to having gone through the playwriting program at Juilliard, you have an MFA in directing from Columbia and were a director before you were a playwright. Do you think your training as a director informs your work as a playwright?
Yes. I have tremendous respect for and interest in the craft of directing. I don’t want a director to stage my vision of the play; rather I invite them to invent and create a world that I never could have imagined. Anne Kauffman is an innovative and visionary director, and with the help of her fantastic design team, she’s taken the play and made it her own. I purposefully include very few stage directions or descriptions of design elements in the script. While I am incredibly exacting and precise with regard to the sounds of the words, I leave the play’s physical world entirely up to the director and designers. So, ironically, because I was trained as a director, I am extremely hands-off. I enjoy my role as the playwright and want the director to bring as much of herself to the production as I have.
Are there writers whose work you especially admire or have drawn influence from?
Harold Pinter and Caryl Churchill are two of my favorites.
You were an intern in The Vineyard’s literary office many years ago. How does it feel to be back with a mainstage production?
It feels amazing and thrilling! When I was an intern, I was a directing student and only just beginning to find my voice as a writer. With GOD’S EAR, The Vineyard’s support of my process was invaluable – it is what helped me to find and believe in my way of working. The Vineyard gave me time and space to work on this play from when it was twenty pages long, and readings and workshops whenever I needed them. You believed in me and this play and saw it through – it was unconditional support.
How would you describe GOD’S EAR?
I really can’t describe it. I mean, I CAN, but I’d be grasping at straws. Do you want me to grasp at straws?
Artists
Gibson Frazier
(Ted) Off-Broadway: God’s Ear (New Georges); The Internationalist (The Vineyard, 13P); Heddatron (Les Freres Corbusier); Eat The Taste (The Barrow Street Theatre). Downtown: Goodbye April, Hello May (HERE); Conquest of the Universe (SALT); Demon Baby (Clubbed Thumb). Regionally: Changes of Heart (Mark Taper Forum); Rough Crossing (w/ Tony Randall); Death of a Salesman (w/ Jack Klugman). LA: Founding member, Buffalo Nights (Garland Award, Drama-Logue Award). Film: Illusion (w/ Kirk Douglas); Man of the Century (Excellence in Independent Filmmaking by National Board of Review). Television: Law & Order Trilogy; Ed; Titus. Associate Artist: The Civilians, Clubbed Thumb.
Judith Greentree
(Tooth Fairy) Off-Broadway: God’s Ear (New Georges); What Do They Want From Me (St. Clement’s). Recently: TRACES/fades (HERE with Ohio Theater). Film: Turn the River; The Girl in the Park; Stereopsis; Yellow; Five Dollars a Day; Together. Created two solo shows: That Which Does Not Kill Me Makes Me Stranger; Heaven and Earth. Regionally: The Second City; The American Conservatory Theater; Romeo and Juliet (Nurse, Culver City Theater in Los Angeles); On The Twentieth Century (Letitia Primrose, Media Theater). Also Unexpected Company and The Onion News Network. Founding member The 78th Street Theatre Lab.
Christina Kirk
(Mel) Broadway: Well. Other credits include: OH, THE HUMANITY and other exclamations (Flea Theater); Current Nobody (Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Sundance Theater Lab); God’s Ear (New Georges); Rocket to the Moon (Long Wharf); Nobody’s Lunch (P.S. 122); Suitcase (Soho Rep, La Jolla Playhouse); [sic] (Soho Rep); Stage Door (HERE) and David Auburn’s Fifth Planet (New York Stage and Film). Film and television: Melinda and Melinda, Bug, Final, Safe Men, Law and Order: SVU, Law and Order: Trial by Jury and Stella. She is a founding associate artist of The Civilians and an affiliate artist of Clubbed Thumb.
Raymond McAnally
(Guy) Off Broadway: God’s Ear (New Georges). New York: 365 Days/365 Plays (LAByrinth/The Public); The Burial at Thebes (La MaMa). Regional: Mere Mortals (Two River); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Long Wharf); Also Mile Square, Florida Rep. Television: 30 Rock (NBC-Universal); Order of the Serpentine (Spike TV); Guiding Light (CBS); The Agency (Pilot 2007 NYTVF). Film: Ghost Town (Dreamworks — in post-production); Penance; etc. MFA from MGSA, Rutgers University. BA from Sewanee. Artistic Associate of Mile Square Theatre, LABfriend of LAByrinth Theater, and founder of The RTA. Member of AEA, AFTRA, and SAG. www.raymondmcanally.com.
Matthew Montelongo
(Flight Attendant/GI Joe) Broadway: The Ritz (Roundabout). Off-Broadway: God’s Ear (New Georges); Five Flights (Rattlestick); Arms and the Man and The Mineola Twins(Roundabout); and Tartuffe (The Public/NYSF). Regional: Vigils (Woolly Mammoth, Helen Hayes nomination for Best Ensemble); Take Me Out (TheatreWorks/Hartford Stage and St. Louis Rep.); Elliott: A Soldier’s Fugue (Alliance); The Game of Love and Chance (Folger); Rough Magic (Hangar); Black Milk, Far Away, and Far East (Studio); The Glass Menagerie (Delaware Theatre Company); Richard II (Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey); The Sweepers (Capital Repertory Theatre); and Beyond Therapy (Old Globe), among many others. Television: The Guiding Light, All My Children, and One Life to Live.
Monique Vukovic
(Lanie) The Roundabout Theatre: u/s for Holly Hunter in Beth Henley’s Impossible Marriage; God’s Ear (New Georges); Tom Noonan’s Paradise Theater: Peter & Vandy (Vandy, 2003 Drama Desk Nomination Best Play), Room 314, Losing Ground, I Want You To, and People Die That Way; Jean Cocteau Repertory Theatre: Iphigeneia at Aulis (Iphigeneia), The Cherry Orchard, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Idiot; Moonwork Productions: Hamlet (Hamlet), Romeo and Juliet (Juliet), The Diviners. Film: Room 314, Losing Ground, The Orangepaper, The Mike Champagne Show, Remains, The Audition, The Story.
Rebecca Wisocky
(Lenora) Credits include: Amazons and Their Men (Clubbed Thumb); Hot ‘N’ Throbbing (Signature); Sueño (MCC); 36 Views (The Public); Tatjana In Color (Culture Project); The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (Henry Miller); Antigone (CSC); King Lear (Playmakers Rep.); House of Blue Leaves (Berkeley Rep.); The Faculty Room (Humana); The Scottish Play (La Jolla). Film/TV: Funny Money, Pollock, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ugly Betty, N.C.I.S., Cold Case, Without a Trace, Medium, Sex & the City, Third Watch, Sopranos, all the Law & Orders. Rebecca is a graduate of NYU’s Experimental Theatre Wing and a founding member of The Fire Dept and Big Dance Theatre Co.
Leah Gelpe
(Sound Design) Leah Gelpe designs sound and video for live performance. Sound designs include Amazons and Their Men (Clubbed Thumb); Two September (The Flea); Mark Smith (13P); Saved (Theatre for a New Audience); Cipher (SPF); This Place Is a Desert (Under the Radar ’08). Projection designs: The Ohio State Murders (Theatre for a New Audience); Britannicus (American Repertory Theatre); Indian Blood (Primary Stages); Walmartopia (Minetta Lane); This Place is a Desert (Under the Radar ’08). Outside of the US, she has worked in Berlin, Budapest, Paris, Vienna and Salzburg.
Megan Schwarz
(Production Stage Manager) Megan Schwarz was the PSM for New Georges’s production of God’s Ear and also worked with Anne Kauffman on 13P’s Have You Seen Steve Steven?. Recent projects have included Semi-Permanent (Audible Productions at the Ace of Clubs) and A Christmas Carol at Trinity Rep. NYC credits include (among others): New Georges, Clubbed Thumb, SPF, FringeNYC. Regional: Actors Theatre of Louisville (four Humana Festivals), Capital Rep, The Idaho, Utah, North Carolina, and Nebraska Shakespeare Festivals. Megan is a budding vegan chef who ran the ING Amsterdam Marathon in 2006 and plans to run NYC in 2008.
Michael Friedman
(Music and Lyrics) Vineyard: God’s Ear, Fully Committed. Founding Associate Artist of The Civilians: (I Am) Nobody’s Lunch, Paris Commune, Gone Missing, Brooklyn at Eye Level, and Canard, Canard, Goose?. Also, music and lyrics for Saved, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, In the Bubble, The Brand New Kid, and The Blue Demon. Off-Broadway: New York Shakespeare Festival, New York Theatre Workshop, Roundabout Theatre Co., Second Stage, Soho Rep, Theater for a New Audience, Signature, and The Acting Company. Regional: Mark Taper Forum, La Jolla Playhouse, Hartford Stage, Humana Festival, ART, Berkeley Rep, Williamstown Theatre Festival, and many others. Dramaturg: A Raisin in the Sun. Artistic Associate: New York Theatre Workshop; MacDowell fellowship; Princeton University Hodder Fellowship. 2007 Obie Award for sustained excellence.
Jenny Schwartz
(Playwright) Plays include GOD’S EAR and CAUSE FOR ALARM. GOD’S EAR was produced in New York by New Georges and Vineyard Theatre, also directed by Anne Kauffman. GOD’S EAR has been produced nationally and internationally from Lisbon, Portugal to Boise, Idaho to Sydney, Australia. Jenny is the 2012 recipient of the Frederick Loewe Award for Musical Theatre for the development of her musical IOWA, which she is writing with composer Todd Almond. Other awards and honors include the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Benjamin H. Danks Award in Drama, a Kesselring honor, two grants from Lincoln Center’s Lecomte du Nuoy Foundation, and Soho Rep’s Dorothy Strelsin Playwriting Fellowship. Additionally, both GOD’S EAR and SOMEWHERE FUN were finalists for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Jenny co-chairs the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab with director Ken Rus Schmoll. Ken directed her play CAUSE FOR ALARM at the New York Fringe Festival way back when. Jenny received an MFA in Theatre Directing from Columbia University, is a graduate of Juilliard’s playwriting program, and a member of New Dramatists.
Anne Kauffman
(Director) Anne Kauffman is an OBIE Award-winning director. Anne directs the co-world premiere of SMOKEFALL by Noah Haidle at South Coast Repertory & Goodman Theatre in 2013. Other production highlights include BELLEVILLE (NYTW – Lucille Lortel nom, Yale Rep & upcoming at Steppenwolf), DETROIT (Playwrights Horizons), SLOWGIRL (LCT3), MAPLE & VINE (Playwrights Horizons, Humana), TALES FROM MY PARENTS’ DIVORCE (Williamstown, The Flea), THIS WIDE NIGHT (Naked Angels, Lucille Lortel Nomination for Best Direction), BECKY SHAW & Body Awareness (Wilma), STUNNING (LCT3), SIXTY MILES TO SILVER LAKE (P73 & Soho Rep), GOD’S EAR (Vineyard, New Georges), THE THUGS (Soho Rep) and the new musical WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE (Yale Rep). Anne is a recipient of the Lilly Award, the Alan Schneider Director Award, Joan and Joseph Cullman Award for Exceptional Creativity, and several Barrymore Awards. She is a Usual Suspect at NY Theatre Workshop, an alumna of the Soho Rep Lab, a current member of Soho Rep’s Artistic Council, Lincoln Center Directors Lab, The Drama League, a founding member of The Civilians, and Associate Artist with Clubbed Thumb and New Georges.
Tyler Micoleau
(Lighting Design) Vineyard Theatre: MIDDLETOWN, GOD’S EAR (Jenny Schwartz), and workshops of MY MARRIAGE TO ERNEST BORGNINE (Nicky Silver) and THE METAL CHILDREN (Adam Rapp). With director Ken Rus Schmoll: TELEPHONE (Foundry) and PROSERPINA (Spoleto USA). Recent and notable Off-Broadway credits: THAT FACE, THE ALIENS, WHEN THE RAIN STOPS FALLING (Lucille Lortel Award), BLASTED (American Theatre Wing Hewes Award), HELL HOUSE (Hewes nom.), BUG (Lucille Lortel and OBIE Awards), ORSON’S SHADOW, UNDERNEATH THE LINTEL and MOJO. Regional: Goodman, American Repertory Theatre, Trinity Rep, Old Globe, Dallas Theater Center, Shakespeare Theater, Chautauqua, Long Wharf, among others. 2010 Village Voice OBIE for Sustained Excellence.