KITT LAVOIE is author of twenty-one produced plays and musical books, including Twice Rather Perish, The Median Line (both winners of the Herbert J. Robinson Award for Dramatic Writing), realer than that (winner, Samuel French OOB Festival), [pwnd] (NYIT Award Nominee, Best Original Short Script), and the widely-produced Good Enough and Party Girl. He has directed more than eighty productions in New York City, including the original productions of more than thirty plays, and recently made his film writing/directing debut with Rainbow Rabbit Reliant. Also an acting coach and teacher, his students currently appear on Broadway, Off-Broadway, on television, and in major films. Kitt holds a Master of Fine Arts in Directing from the Actors Studio Drama School and is a Member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society and Artistic Director of The CRY HAVOC Company, which focuses on developing new plays.

THE OOB FESTIVAL (OOB): Let’s start with the most obvious question: what have you been up to since the OOB Festival last year? 

KITT LAVOIE (KT): You know, it’s like when an actor asks me if I have a recommendation for a monologue – I can’t think of the name of a single play.  I know I’ve kept busy the past few months – but nothing leaps immediately to mind!  But give it a second…

The morning after the OOB finals, I found out my play [pwnd] was nominated for Best Original Short Script for the 2009 New York Independent Theater Awards – so that wasn’t a bad couple of days.  Since then, I have been keeping busy with the things I usually have going on – teaching playwriting and coaching actors, and overseeing the educational and new play development programs of the theater company of which I am the Artistic Director.  I do a lot of work with playwrights as a director and dramaturg on new plays, so I have directed several workshops of new plays in the past few months.  I’ve written several short plays since last summer, plus I have been trying to wrap up three different full-lengths that have been “almost finished” for too long.  Plus I have been working on a pair of theater-related documentaries (one in pre-production, one in post). 

Most recently I worked on Sondheim: The Birthday Concert with the New York Philharmonic, which will air on PBS Great Performances later this year.  Over the past couple of years, I have carved out a niche for myself coordinating the stage and television productions of musicals that are being filmed to air on PBS (including the Philharmonic’s Camelot last year with Gabriel Byrne and the John Doyle production of Company). 

I was also very recently approached by a producer about adapting and directing realer than that, my play that won last year’s OOB festival, for the screen.  So I am about to set to work on the screenplay for that.

OOB: Kitt, beyond being a playwright, you serve as the artistic director for a fabulous theatre company in NYC, The CRY HAVOC Company.  CRY HAVOC produced your winning play, realer than that, last year.  Can you talk about what it’s like serving as the head of your own producer?   Are there advantages to that relationship?  Disadvantages?

KT: I actually tend to compartmentalize very well.  I think that comes in part from having directed my own plays so often – I really do forget in rehearsal that I am directing something I wrote.  It also helps that CRY HAVOC has built directly into its philosophy that “our production mechanisms exist to support our developmental programs – and not vice-versa.”  So the real trick is being sure that I am not letting myself off the hook at all in the development of the plays I write – that I am held to the same high standards as any of our other playwrights.  Fortunately, we have an incredibly talented team of writers, directors, and actors who are devoted to new play development – and especially devoted to not letting me off the hook.  I appreciate them a lot.  So once it comes time to produce – once a project, be it mine or someone else’s gets the greenlight to go ahead – we have a team and mechanisms in place to guide it to the stage.

OOB:  Building on the last question: you are a bit of a triple threat: a writer, an actor, and a director.  Can you give us insight into how that all came into being?  Did you start as one and happen in find yourself in other roles, or did you know that you always wanted to do all three things?

KT: I think like most people working in the theater, I started as an actor.  When I was in college, I started to dabble in writing and directing.  After a while, I came to consider myself an Actor who Wrote (and Sometimes Directed).  I took a year off from theater after college to see if it was actually what I wanted to pursue – or, more to the point, to decide if I was right that I didn’t want to go to law school, which had been my plan since fifth grade.  At the end of that year, I realized that I wanted to go back to grad school to get my MFA in theater – and to focus on directing.  I think I think of myself primarily as a “storyteller” – and in the theater (and film, for that matter), the director is the one who ultimately pulls together and arbitrates how the story is going to be told out of all of the parts that the rest of the team brings to the table.  So that’s what I did (at the Actors Studio Drama School).  I kept writing while I was in school, and had to take the full acting curriculum as part of the directing program – but when I got out, I began to think of myself as a Director who Wrote (and Sometimes Acted).

Over the past few years, though, I have begun to identify as a pretty straight-up Director-Playwright hyphenate.  I don’t act as much anymore as I used to, or as much as I wish I did.  I do try to act in something at least once a year – if only to remind my director self that, as an actor, I like to be directed.  And I absolutely use the training I got as an actor every day in the rehearsal room – and, in a meaningful way, when I am sitting at my computer writing.  But, I do think as you are building a professional career, you do have to narrow down the things you “consider yourself,” even if you do dabble elsewhere from time-to-time.

I should say, though, that I have actually done all three in the OOB festival.  The first show I did in New York was as an actor in a play in the 1996 OOB festival, when it was back at the old Harold Clurman Theater.  I remember it being a real thrill to perform on an honest-to-God Off-Broadway stage!

OOB: You shared some great news with us at the book launch: you recently wrote and directed your first short film.  First off, a huge congrats on that achievement! Secondly, could you talk a little more about this experience for us?  Was this your first time attempting a screenplay?  What did you find most surprising about that process, as opposed to the playwriting process?

A still from Kitt's film Rainbow Rabbit Reliant

KT: Thanks!  God, I feel like I could go on forever about the differences between the forms.  Especially in directing and acting, which are kind of like the opposite for theater and film.  But I’ll focus on writing.

I had written a few screenplays before, including adaptations of two of my full-length plays.  But this was my first screenplay to be produced.  It was interesting, though, to write for film after spending so much time writing for the theater, where you have to create and make tangible an entire universe just out of the things that the people say in it.  Film, though, is a visual medium – you can (and should) paint the picture of the world before the characters ever open their mouths.

I was actually concerned when I first wrote Rainbow Rabbit Reliant that it was too much like a play – it is, essentially, a group of people in an apartment talking.  That said, that was part of the mandate – the producers who approached me about writing it said they wanted a script that took place entirely (or nearly entirely) in one location.  But I was actually really pleased to find that, when I tried to write a stage adaptation of the screenplay, it made not a lick of sense without some of the visuals that were written into it, especially at the beginning and end.  I’d still like to adapt it at some point, but there are some real big-picture things about the world that I realize would be a real challenge to express through indirect dialogue in a short play.

In any case, I learned an awful lot from the process of not just writing it, but also directing it – and, critically, seeing how the screenplay ended up living as a finished film.  I’m looking forward to writing and directing another film – and it looks like I’m going to get another chance with realer than that.

OOB: Lastly— do you have any plugs or upcoming projects we should know about?

Stephanie Casaubon in Rainbow Rabbit Reliant

KT:  Well, Rainbow Rabbit Reliant was just announced as an Official Selection of the 2010 New York Downtown Short Film Festival and will be showing at the Duo Theatre on Tuesday, April 27 at 8:00pm for those people who are in New York City. 

And I hope people will come out to see the work CRY HAVOC is developing.  One of our main goals is to demystify the play-making process to the theater-going audience, so we have regular events showcasing projects at various stages of development – including readings of plays (both finished and still in-progress), open rehearsals, and simply designed but fully-rehearsed workshop stagings of plays.  And our events are always followed by a talk-back with the artists involved. 

I am very pleased to say that CRY HAVOC has very recently reached our fundraising goal that will allow us to start the process of moving into our own full-time space.  It’s a very exciting time for us.  And our public events are only going to become more frequent once we are in our new home.  Regular updates on our new space and public events are always posted at www.cryhavoccompany.org.

Also, folks should check out CRY HAVOC’s bi-weekly podcast – a round-table discussion among members of the company about the craft of acting, writing, and directing and the realities of being a working artist in New York City.  We are coming to the end of our second season and have done episodes on topics including: Auditioning, Character History, Objectives and Obstacles, Improvisation, Rehearsal Etiquette, Acting in Musicals, Sensory Work, and Nudity and Sexuality in Rehearsal and Performance.  We are also about to release the fourth in a five-part series of discussions among some of our company’s playwrights talking about their working process.  We have done episodes on Preparing to Write, The First Draft, Hearing and Taking Feedback, and part four will be on Rewriting.  Episodes are available on our website and on iTunes.

And you can always keep up with what I am up to at my website – www.kittlavoie.com.

Jenny Kirlin in Rainbow Rabbit Reliant