About the Play:

Two teenaged girls confront hidden feelings during a role play have to do with their much older teacher. RUNNING TIME: 10 minutes.

Girls Play will be presented Wednesday, July 20 at 6:30 PM.

About the Author:

Masha Obolensky’s plays have been produced by TimeLine Theatre (Chicago, Joseph Jefferson-nominated “Best New Work”), The Nora Theatre (Cambridge), Arts Emerson (Boston), the Kennedy Center (D.C., ), Access Theatre (NYC), Here Arts Center (NYC), Source Festival D.C., and the Boston Theatre Marathon. She has an M.A. from Emerson College and an MFA from Boston University. Masha is currently a Huntington Theatre Playwriting Fellow and received the 2010 Pen New England Discovery Award. She was a recent recipient of a 2011 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship (finalist) and Girls Play was awarded the 2010 Kennedy Center Michael Kanin Ten Minute Play Award. It will be published in two upcoming anthologies. The full-length version, The Girl Problem, was awarded a 2010 WordBRIDGE fellowship.

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

Masha: Born: Houston, Texas, but not your usual Texan upbringing with an Australian mother and Russian father. What I have taken with me from Texas is the sense of wide open space in which to imagine big. State of mind: New York City – I lived there for 9 years and was shaped artistically by the people and ideas I encountered there. Current residence: Boston, MA. – This is where I came to study and to transition – into teaching and then also, unexpectedly, playwriting.

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

Masha: Collaborative, actor-driven, rhythmic, non-linear, theatrical.

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?

Masha: These characters also live in a longer play, called The Girl Problem. In that play, there are three girls and a man who is sometimes a figment of the girls’ imaginations and sometimes a real person. I wanted to focus in on girls and desire – and question whether it is possible for them, in a society that is confused about how to handle even the idea of their sexuality, to find their way and to develop this part of themselves. In a larger sense, it is about suppressed yearning and finding the courage to speak the unspoken. I first came to this idea when directing a production of Wedekind’s Spring Awakening – I loved the scenes between the three girls and wished there was a further exploration of these characters. While the girls in my play are not at all the same characters as Wedekind’s, they are trying to thrive in a similarly oppressive environment.

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?

Masha: I hope they for a moment remember the awkwardness and giganticness of emotions once they felt when they were 13 going on 14.

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?

Masha: Influences on me as a theatre artist have been my teachers over the years: Anne Bogart and the SITI Company, Tina Landau, Melia Bensussen, Scott Zigler, Kate Snodgrass, to name some and then others whom I admire as I sit in the audience: Caryl Churchill, Marie Irene Fornes, Naomi Wallace, the Fiona Shaw / Deborah Warner partnership, Theatre de Complicite, Robert LePage….

An unconventional source of inspiration was a bag of flour.

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?

Masha: It would be site-specific, with all elements contributing equally to the story-telling – a “whole” experience in which audience members are immersed in the event happening around them.  It would be evocative and weave the linear, literal, visual, and associative. Something like a piece I once saw in Russia that took place in every room and hallway of a house – with each audience member having a unique experience.  The material would be generated by the ensemble and I would function as the editor working with the designers and director in a very hands-on process.  It would be grounded in good story-telling, would be visually and aurally exciting, and full of the unexpected.

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

Masha: I once had a pet quail who I taught how to do tricks.

About the Producer:

The Huntington Theatre Company engages, inspires, entertains and challenges audiences with theatrical productions that range from the classics to new works; we train and support the next generation of theatre artists; we provide arts education programs that promote life-long learning to a diverse community; and we celebrate the essential power of the theatre to illuminate our common humanity.

Through the Huntington Playwriting Fellows program, the Huntington fosters the talents of local playwrights at all stages of their careers. Fellows are awarded two-year residencies during which they are provided a modest grant, participate in a bi-weekly writers’ collective, and benefit from access to the artistic staff and to the resources of the Huntington.