About the Play:
In The Bear (A Tragedy), Diane and Everett Feld must negotiate their marriage after the unexpected result of Everett’s secret hunting excursions comes to light.
About the Author:
E. J. C. Calvert is from St. Louis, Missouri, currently living in Brooklyn. Recent plays include Cadaver Synod (Brecht Forum), Witness! The Amazing Slipping-Away (An American Triptych) (The Cell), This One Time I Was Trying to Die: An Exercise in Exposition, Development, and Recapitulation (The Queens Players), St. Louis Threw a Party and the Whole World Came (NSD Theatre). She clearly prefers titles that verge on paragraph-length.
E. J. C.’s Forty Day’s 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?
E.J.C. Calvert (EJCC): I started playwriting in high school. Throughout grade school, I was actively cycling through different art forms to find one that I could hang my hat on. Songwriting failed with embarrassing aplomb in middle school, fiction writing got me through to high school before my interest finally petered out. I started writing plays in late high school when angsty poetry just wasn’t cutting it. Naturally, my first attempt at dramatic writing was based on a Smashing Pumpkins song.
A milestone for me as a playwright occurred in undergrad when I was a recipient of the Leota Diesel Ashton Prize in Playwriting. It made me realize that I wasn’t just flailing around in the dark. It wasn’t just that my efforts were being recognized and that I had the prize money to buy a round for everyone in the bar. It was when I realized that my plays weren’t just having an effect on me, that they could affect audiences, and had the potential to be powerful. This is why I chose to devote myself to playwriting instead of a more reasonable profession like, say, lion taming.
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?
EJCC: I had a can of soda that was half vodka and three hours to kill in a computer lab at Washington University. Also, I like bears. A natural progression.
The play is actually part of a trilogy of “Marriage Plays,” which are my attempt to satirize the genre of theatre that I find least compelling – those bland, kitchen sink, will-we-divorce-or-won’t-we dramas. Let’s smelt that kitchen sink and make tiaras for everyone! (Assuming the sink is metal and we all want stainless-steel tiaras. But we all do, right?)
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?
EJCC: The Bear was a finalist at Perishable Theatre’s International Women’s Playwriting Festival and was produced in a one-act play festival at Wash U. For the production, I got to come in at the end of the play wearing a full-out bear costume, which was, um, totally awesome.
I do hope to develop this play further. I love how the rehearsal process can change a play and, when all goes well, help it grow. I hope to learn a lot from my director, my actors, and my audience.
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?
EJCC: My producer is the New School for Drama, where I was learnt most of the things I do now know. I received an MFA in playwriting in May this year. I am at the helm, producer-wise, but I’m telling myself that the stressed-out scrambling is part of the joy. And it is, right? Scrambling makes the best eggs, after all.
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?
EJCC: I played a princess in a play in kindergarten that we put up in our classroom. During our performance, I changed some words in my princess monologue, which made my friend laugh, and then later she yelled at me because I made her mess up and then we weren’t friends anymore. Witness: the power of the dramatic arts!