Artwork by Daniel Spenser.

About the Play:

Hanksylvania is the story of a professional football coach and the halftime speech that changed his life. RUNNING TIME: 12 minutes.

Hanksylvania will be presented Tuesday, July 19 at 6:30 PM.

Hanksylvania will be presented at the Festival Finals on Sunday, July 24 at 1 pm.

About the Author:

Travis Helwig is a 2011 graduate of the MFA Dramatic Writing Program at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU.  He performs improv and sketch comedy around the city with fellow OOB Playwright Kevin Mead (The Burgler) and their group Mike Duffy.  He will be having a reading of his full-length play Post-Shakespeare (an NYU nominee for Kennedy Center MFA Readings) later in the summer.  Helwig currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.

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

Travis: I grew up in Stratford, Connecticut down the road from an abandoned Shakespeare Theater.   There’s a short story in that somewhere.  You can have it.

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

Travis: Redundant.  Handsome.  Writer.  Handsome.  Redundant.

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?

Travis: I was never into football.  That changed two years ago when I discovered Rex Ryan, the coach of the New York Jets.  I became obsessed with every word that came out of his mouth.  Rex is a capital-C Character.  He’s the type of guy you’d never believe is a real person.  Everything he says is perfect.  This play was an attempt to capture him in ten minutes.  Put him a cage.  I wanted to see if I could pin down his voice and at the same time, really figure out what makes him tick.   This play is my best guess.

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?

Travis: They should know that we are all going to die in 2012 so this whole play festival idea is just sort of silly and futile and we should just be in our basements with loved ones.

I hope audiences take away the gift bag I left under their seats.

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

Travis: Del Close.  Anton Chekhov.  Bruce Springsteen.  I am also influenced by the idea that every play is a comedy.

Weirdest influence?  The celebrity surrounding Helvetica.  I just wrote a pilot around it.

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?

Travis: I would go back in time and write Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. I don’t think it can get much better than that.

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

Travis: I spend most of my time freestyle rapping.  Seriously.