About the Play:
In Facing the Window, a woman confronts her husband about his unseemly behavior while they do yard work.
About the Author:
Tom Matthew Wolfe is a playwright, actor, and founding member of Blue Roses Productions. Full-length plays include Boxing the Underworld, Housewarming, Dreaming Life, and Stray Cats. Stray Cats was a finalist for the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference and produced at Manhattan Theatre Source (Playground Development Series). Housewarming was a semi-finalist for the 2009 O’Neill Conference and the 2009 Princess Grace Award. Short plays include Facing the Window (2009 E.S.T Marathon finalist), and Harborside (2008 Samuel French Short Play Festival). Currently working on a new webisode series In The ‘Wood. Dramatists Guild Member and co-founder of ‘Wright On! Playwrights Group.
Tom’s 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?
Tom Matthew Wolfe (TMW): I started in theatre as an actor, though I’ve written poems, monologues, and short scenes since about age nineteen. I wrote my first one-act during my senior year in college. About six years ago, I realized that playwriting was more satisfying to me than acting, so I began to write plays exclusively. I feel honored to have another short play in this festival; my play Harborside was staged at this festival in 2008, also produced by my theatre company, Blue Roses Productions. That was a sweet experience. Proud is a challenging word. Playwriting can be quite humbling and I’m an emerging writer. But I am proud to be a founding member of Blue Roses and my playwrights group, ‘Wright On! I’ve written several full-length plays, one of which (Stray Cats) received a workshop production at Manhattan Theatre Source in their Playground Development Series. I’m currently rewriting a full-length play that I wrote last summer, and beginning a new project. I’m happy to be productive, to have opportunities to share my work.
OOB: You are a theatre artist who is multi-talented: you produce, act, and write. How has having experience as a producer, company founder, and actor informed the way you craft your plays? Are there certain elements of a script you become more aware of, as a producer?
TMW: Although I’ve taken on producing duties, it’s all so collaborative and fellow company members have helped quite a bit. I’ve helped with casting, getting all the right information to Actors Equity, and so on, but I’m not working on any of these things alone. That said, I’m more likely to write with certain company members in mind because I know their work and casting can be a challenge.
My experience as an actor has informed my writing more than anything though. I still concentrate on action, relationship, how people behave. I’m interested in secrets. I want my work to be full of life. That’s no different than acting.
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 festival audience will take from your play?
TMW: One of the characters in Facing the Window is a physical therapist who works with stroke victims. A few years ago, a close family member suffered a stroke and I saw one of her therapy sessions. Her physical therapist was funny, earthy, and smart. I wanted to write a full-length play with a protagonist based on him. As an experiment, I wrote one scene with him at home, married, hiding a dark secret. I developed that one scene further and it became Facing the Window. It felt self-contained and I was equally fascinated with his wife, a Spanish teacher. Her voice felt active and tough, and her silences were interesting to me. I hope that audiences find these characters fascinating. I hope that it conveys how we reach for things to fight boredom – a beer, a ballgame, something. We all want to feel more alive and the pursuit of that feeling can be meaningful or it can leave us feeling more desperate and isolated. I also hope the audience finds this play funny. I think it’s sad and funny.
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?
TMW: This will be the first production of this play. I plan to use rehearsal to clarify moments or make changes if something doesn’t sound quite right. When I found out that the play was selected for this festival, I read it again and found a few small things that didn’t seem clear. So I will certainly address them. I don’t plan to make fundamental changes though. I like the story and voices of these characters. I want a chance to hear what I’ve worked on so far, because I’ve only heard the play read once. But this is a small play and I don’t want to lose the core of the piece.
OOB: Tell us a little about your producer? How did you come to form your relationship together?
TMW: I’m a founding member of Blue Roses Productions, the producer of this play (though I will be performing many producing duties as well). As an actor and playwright, I’ve worked with Erma Duricko, our Artistic Director, for almost twenty years. I met Erma at my alma mater, the University of Scranton, where she was guest director at the time (she directed me in a production of The Lady of Larksur Lotion by Tennessee Williams). As an actor, I’ve worked with Erma and Tim Brown in a number of productions and readings. Blue Roses has staged several of my short plays in readings, the workshop production of my play Stray Cats, as well as the production of Harborside at the 2008 Samuel French Off-Off-Broadway Short Play Festival. Blue Roses is like family.
OOB: It’s amazing that you have such a strong relationship with Blue Roses. For some of our playwrights who might be interested in starting their own theatre companies or finding a theatrical home for their work: what advice do you have?
TMW: Blue Roses was the vision of Erma Duricko, who taught and directed me in college. I was friends with Erma, Tim Brown, and Dominic Comperatore (a wonderful actor). During my senior year in college, Erma cast Dominic and me in a show, and one of the short plays in that production traveled down to the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival in New Orleans. Soon after this, we formed the company. So it was a good fit and I just fell into it. I was just fortunate.
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?
TMW: My favorite memory is meeting my girlfriend, Kara Lee Corthron, who is an amazing playwright. We met in a workshop for actors, writers, and directors in 2003. We were both there as actors. She wrote a short piece and I read a part in it. It was so obvious that she had an exciting dramatic voice. I was jobless at the time. Her day job back then was copyediting. I asked her if she could give me any advice on how to land copyediting work. She gave me a tutorial at a coffeehouse and we hung out a bit more, watched The Shining, talked for hours about plays, and began dating. Some of my favorite memories involve reading or seeing other people’s work, talking about great plays and performances over drinks or coffee. I can still see Christopher Plummer’s eyes as he performed a section of Hamlet in the play Barrymore, or hear the audience gasp during a production of Sympathetic Magic by Lanford Wilson. Often when it’s my own work, I’m too absorbed in it to digest the sweetness of the experience. Anyway, if I have a favorite memory in theatre, it must be meeting Kara.