About the Play:

A tense visitation occurs in an assisted living facility as an old man lies confined to a hospital bed, imprisoned by aphasia and robbed of his ability to communicate. RUNNING TIME: 25 minutes

Assisted Living will be presented Thursday, July 21 at 6:30 PM.

About the Author:

Jeffrey Neuman’s work has been produced at theaters and festivals across the United States and the United Kingdom. His plays have been recognized with awards from the Claire Donaldson Festival, Pint Sized Plays, Chameleon Circle Theatre, Turtle Shell Productions, and the Front Range Playwrights Festival, among others. He is currently developing a full length play in conjunction with Paragon Theatre, and his first publication, Modern Goddesses: Two Short Plays of Mythic Proportions, will be released by JAC Publishing and Promotions later this year. Jeffrey holds an MA in theater and has worked as a director and dramaturg for the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. He has presented professional papers on musical theater history for the Association for Theater in Higher Education, the American Alliance of Theatre Education, and the American Music Research Center. His original research was acknowledged in the book Kander and Ebb, James Leve’s contribution to the Yale University Press Broadway Masters series.

OOB Festival: Where do you come from (home state, state of mind, or both)?

Jeffrey: I grew up in New York, but now live in Denver, where I’ve tried to let the even-keeled serenity of Colorado living temper my somewhat manic inner-city tendencies. I’m finding that neurosis often trumps serenity, though.

OOB Festival: Give us five words that describe who you are as a playwright.

Jeffrey: I think the five words that best describe me as a playwright are, “Prone to attention deficit disorder.”

 

OOB Festival: Talk about your entry to this year’s Festival. How did you come to write this play? Was there a particular inspiration behind its creation?

Jeffrey: I wrote Assisted Living for my grandfather who died several years ago from complications related to Alzheimer’s disease. The last time I saw him alive, he was in an assisted living nursing facility and virtually unable to communicate. Aphasia had robbed him of the ability to speak. Well, almost. He was able to say two words while I was in the room with him – “banana” and “bullshit.” I thought it was a sad, grotesque, yet oddly funny phenomenon to see a man who had always been such a strong and powerful presence diminished to two ridiculous words. Despite how strange and simple his vocabulary had become, though, there was also something hopeful about the tenacity with which he clung to those words. He tried to use them to convey everything he wanted to say, but was hindered at every turn by the limitations of his own failing body.

During that last visit, my grandfather tried (my God did he try!) to prove to me that he was still the same man he’d always been. I think he was trying to prove it to himself, too. It was a profoundly moving experience and it became a story I simply had to share. So, to answer the question, I wrote this play to pay respect to my old man’s old man.

OOB Festival: What is one thing you hope audiences will take away from your Festival piece? Is there any information you would like them to know before they watch your work performed?

Jeffrey: I really don’t want to tell people too much about the piece before they see it. It may seem a bit ironic, but I want the play to speak for itself despite the fact that it is about a man who has lost the ability to do just that. I will say, though, that I want this piece to move people in the same way I was moved by the last experience I had with my grandfather. I want them to be both amazed and horrified by the character of the Old Man – amazed by the courage and tenacity with which he tries to hold on to who and what he is, and horrified by the physical limitations he’s facing in that struggle. I didn’t write the piece to draw out a specific emotional response, but rather to elicit contradictory responses that I hope people will explore after leaving the theater. For me, this is not just a story about a man with Alzheimer’s. It is a story about the human need to connect and the sometimes all-too-human inability to do so.

OOB Festival: What/who are some of the major influences on your writing? What’s the most unconventional place/thing that you’ve taken inspiration from?

Jeffrey: The world surprises me every day and I’m never quite sure what is going to influence me or where I’m going to find inspiration. Sometimes a painting or a photograph will move me to write; other times a song, a lyric, or a musical phrase will trigger an idea for me. I tend to be a very image driven playwright though. More often than not, I write a play because I see a single image that I need to explain, explore, or expand upon theatrically: a head of wildly tangled hair; a young man wearing a tattered prison uniform yet a surprisingly new-looking beret; an untouched beer abandoned on a bar room table; tense wrinkles around lips that are still wet from a recently applied coat of expensive lipstick; liver-spotted hands in a constant state of grasp and release. All of these images have inspired me to write a play or create a character because they are eminently theatrical and seem to have a story that wants to be told.

I’d have to say that the most unconventional thing I’ve taken inspiration from is a news story out of Gaza in which zookeepers painted donkeys to look like zebras. The zebras died from malnutrition during the Israel-Hamas War and were too expensive to replace. So, the zookeepers substituted painted donkeys in the popular zebra exhibit. When I heard the story my mind started reeling with questions: What kind of solution is that? Is it a solution? How long did it take people to figure out that the animals they were lining up to see weren’t zebras, but “zebras?” How did the conversation among the zookeepers go from “I can’t believe our prize zebras starved to death” to “Hey! I’ve got an idea…!” I found the story fascinating and it made its way into a short play.

OOB Festival: What is your “dream play”–that is, if the more restrictive elements of production (budget, space, casting, and technical elements) were not a consideration, what type of theatre piece would you create?

Jeffrey: What a wonderful question! I hope to see the day when a playwright can get a piece produced that doesn’t have budgetary and/or technical restrictions! Despite how wonderful the question and the scenario, though, I’m not quite sure what my “dream play” would be. My impulse is to say that it would be a big, profound, ambitious, and genre-defying theatrical event. However, I truly love small, intimate plays that are built upon and take advantage of the unique relationship between actors and audience sharing a real space in real time. I think that’s why I love one act, ten-minute, and short plays so much. Not only is it a strange and wonderful challenge to tell a complete story so economically, but a festival of short plays feels theatrical, like pure theater, like something that can only exist when actors take a stage and spectators take their seats. Short plays keep people on their toes because they never know what they’re going to get next or how long they’ll be permitted to stay in the world of the play. I’ve never thought it through before, but I think my “dream play” would be a night of interconnected shorter pieces, a program that somehow seems to tell a singular and cohesive story despite the fact that it volleys between a number of different plays and a variety of different playwriting conventions.

OOB Festival: If someone saw you on the street, what’s one fact that they would never guess about you?

Jeffrey: People would probably not know upon sight that I am profoundly hearing impaired. I lost my hearing about five years ago. It wasn’t trauma induced, just awesome genetics. (Deaf and bald! I’m one lucky guy!) I’d been progressively losing my hearing for years, but found so many ways to compensate for it that I didn’t realize the seriousness or extent of the loss. It really is quite amazing how you learn to navigate social interactions when you are left, quite literally, without all your senses.

In 2009 my partner convinced me to go for a hearing test and it turned out I was dealing with 30% hearing capacity in my left ear and just about 40% in my right. I wear hearing aids now and they are pretty amazing pieces of technology, virtually undetectable despite the fact that I can’t hide them behind a head of hair. Most people don’t notice them upon an initial meeting and have no idea that even with them I have a hard time tracking and taking part in conversations. So, if you do see me on the street and you start calling my name, please know that I’m not just ignoring you when I don’t turn around.

About the Producer:

EMERGING ARTISTS THEATRE’S mission is to provide a dynamic home for emerging writers and artists, providing the unique opportunity for playwrights to collaborate with directors, actors, and designers throughout the development process—from idea through fully realized production. EAT’s supportive environment nurtures a close-knit group of artists working toward the common goal of creating dynamic theatre, and its commitment to the development of new works is integral to the cultural enrichment of New York City.

In 2007 EAT garnered their first Drama Desk Award nomination for Capathia Jenkins in (mis)UNDERSTANDING MAMMY: The Hattie McDaniel Story. The 15th Anniversary season, showcased over 20 premiere works, 3 Off-Broadway shows, and worked with more than 400 emerging NYC–based theatre artists. In this 16th season, EAT will be premiering its first musical at NYMF, showcasing over two dozen new works, and continuing to support the greatest artists New York City has to offer.