About the Play:

In The Delphinium Mansion, two men on the way to pay their final respects to a friend, find out that the deceased had a few more surprises left up his dead sleeves.

About the Author:

Libby Leonard’s most recent productions include a workshop of The Blue Balloon (New York Theatre Workshop), The Armchair Traveler  (Source Fest 2009 Commission/Hangar Theatre), The Delphinium Mansion (American Globe’s 15 Minute Play Festival), Hutton’s Paradox (Schapiro Theatre), Five Second Grace (Great Plains Theatre Conference 2008), What Remains (2008 Source Festival), Imaginarium of Henry the IV Part 2 (Schapiro Studio), Coriolis Effect (1,2,3 Go Festival!) and The Dinner (Studio Dante). She was a 2009 Hangar Theatre Lab Company resident playwright and is a Liberace Scholar, a Howard Stein Fellow, a Shubert Fellow and the recipient of the 2009 Alan Minieri Memorial Playwriting Award. Libby holds an M.F.A. in Playwriting from Columbia University and a B.A. in English from Penn State.

Libby’d Forty Days to Forty Plays Interview:

OOB Festival (OOB): Tell us a little about your playwriting career. When did you start writing plays? What are some of your proudest accomplishments as a playwright?

Libby Leonard (LL): I remember writing one extremely terrible play when I was 14, but after that I was more interested in writing fiction for a really long time. It wasn’t until I went to Penn State that I started writing plays again.  And I wish I could say I started again because of a flash of inspiration that occurred after reading Chekhov, but it was to impress some boy I had a crush on in the theatre department.  

Last summer, I had a residency at The Hangar Theatre, where they produced one of my first dramas. I’m used to writing comedy and also crazy fantasies, so I wasn’t sure how this was going to fair. But I remember after the last moment of the show, I turned around and saw people in every row behind me crying. Some came up to me after and shared personal stories about similar situations that were involved in the play.  It was powerful. And I’m not particularly sure this can be filed under pride, but I felt like I had the ability to really connect with people. And that was a really good feeling. I think sometimes as a writer, I worry that I’m doing something completely selfish and not really giving anything to the world or giving anything that will actually make a significant change in the world, but at that moment, I felt like I had contributed something honest that moved people for the better or at least gave them an opportunity for catharsis. 

OOB: You came to playwright from a very extensive fiction background. Can you talk a bit more about your double life as a writer of fiction? How does this work inform the way you approach your plays? How do you find the two genres overlap?

I like that word “extensive.” It makes me sound way more published than I actually am.

My double-life as a fiction writer began at the age of 12, when I wrote what I thought were incredibly original horror stories, but only turned out to be Nightmare on Elm St. fan fiction. I have a couple of long-standing projects that I’ve been working on longer than I care to admit, and am currently working on a young adult series.

As far as informing my approach, the fiction that has inspired me informs how I tackle plays. I love the epic and detailed qualities of fiction. Since I don’t want to turn this into a Facebook info section, I won’t list my favorites, but all of them have been a huge influence on my writing. So has a lot of film. And thinking in terms of film and literature while I’m creating something, always leaves for some interesting/seemingly impossible stage directions, which I typically just assume as a “not my problem” situation and foist upon some unsuspecting director. But I think (and hope) this kind of thing is exciting for them. At least it has been with the people I’ve worked with in the past. I will say though, that playwriting has made me a thousand times better at structuring my fiction, so there is a good give and take going on from both.

As for overlapping genres, my fiction has always been dialogue heavy, so it’s only natural to jump from one to the other, but I find fiction much more difficult to write. I’m a word Nazi, so the amount of time I sit and scrutinize over the dialogue in my plays is doubled when I’m writing fiction.

OOB: 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? What do you hope the festival audience will take from your play? 

LL: Oh man. I can’t say too much because it will ruin a lot of surprises, but I can say that it was inspired by a news article and that the fact that it’s set in Scotland was because I saw Black Watch at St. Anne’s Warehouse the week before.  It’s not a piece that’s trying to change the world, but it will most certainly make people laugh, so I suppose that would be my aim in the festival.

OOB: What is the history of your festival entry? Do you plan to hone and further develop the play in upcoming rehearsals? Has it already been produced? 

LL: Last May, the show was in the 15 Minute Play Festival at the American Globe Theatre. It won the Audience Choice award. It was pretty exciting. It went up again as part of a reading series at Second Stage through Columbia University again this past March. I had an amazing time for each performance. I got to work with actors that I’ve been working with consistently for the last three years and just had a lot of fun.

OOB: Can you elaborate a little about your relationship with the actors in the piece? You mentioned that they really work for the play; how did you begin to work with them? Without giving away any of the show’s secrets, how has their work on the piece altered the way you think about these characters?

The two amazing men I’m working with are Al Foote III and Justin RG Holcomb. I’ve actually been working with Al for the last three years. When I cast him in this a year ago, he suggested Justin to me. When both of them came in for the first read-through, I couldn’t believe how ridiculously perfect they were. I’ve done the show a couple of times with them. They are two of the most intelligent and incredibly talented actors I know. Watching them work is incredible. I got some honorable mention for directing Delphinium at the 15 Minute Play Festival and felt like an idiot accepting the certificate, because I literally almost did nothing but adjust a couple of movements and make sure they were standing in the light when we were teching.

We all enjoy each other’s company too, which helps and I literally trust them to play anything. They were both just actually in my thesis production at NYTW. And aside from the whole theatre thing, they’re both righteously awesome people too.

OOB: Tell us a little about your producer? How did you come to form your relationship together? If you are self-producing, please talk a little about that process — have you ever mounted your own work before?

LL: I’m producing this myself. And directing it myself.  I’ve done both of these things before and with this show in particular. The play isn’t entirely complicated staging-wise. It’s a matter of just having the right actors to trust, which I no doubt will have. Producing your own work can be stressful though depending on the scale of the show, but I feel like it’s always pretty rewarding because it keeps your head 100% in the proverbial game and since I’m obsessive about making sure everything is in place whether I’m producing or not, I don’t really mind doing it.

OOB: Looking back over your personal history in the theatre, what emerges as your favorite memory? Is there a particular story you’d like to share?   

LL: I’m going to have to bring up my residency at The Hangar Theatre again. I was there for three weeks during the summer and loved it. One weekend the actors in the lab put on a 24-hour site-specific theatre festival, where some of them wrote the scripts. I had come downstairs in the apartment the day before to sit with my friend who was the other playwright in residence. He said, “You’re going to kill me, but I signed us up to act in the 24-hour play festival.” And I did almost kill him, but I had the best time.

After my scene was over (it took place in a parking garage downtown), I went to the next show, which was near a fountain. They had accumulated over 80 people while walking around and performing….it was unreal. During the next two shows, we were to run to another location en masse. While I was running I remember wishing there was a camera taping me, so I could remember how happy and free I was in that one moment.