About the Play:
A translator, haunted by the testimony of a UN Peacekeeper charged with the murder of an escaped war criminal who ordered a massacre in Rwanda, keeps breaking into unexpected songs as she talks to us at her breakfast table.
About the Author:
Edward Pomerantz wrote the movie Caught, based on his novel Into It, starring Edward James Olmos, released by Sony Pictures Classics, and nominated for three Independent Spirit Awards. His plays Brisburial and A Tune Beyond Us were produced by Woodie King, Jr.’s New Federal Theatre. He was a playwright-in-residence at the Yale Drama School, and has won two Writers Guild Awards. Two of his one- acts were published by Samuel French when he was in his teens, and his play The Garden won First Prize in a Samuel French National Playwriting Contest. He is currently an Adjunct Associate Professor of Screenwriting at Columbia University and Writing For Television at SUNY-Purchase. He is also the co-founder and director of the Harlem Arts Alliance Dramatic Writing Academy, and a Creative Advisor and Visiting Writer at various international screenwriting labs in Mexico, Europe, South America, and Cuba. This June, he was invited by Kinitiras, a dance theatre company in Athens, Greece, to direct a production of his new play Electra: The Rewrite, a wild mix of Greek Tragedy, Vaudeville, and Bob Hope Road movies.
Edward’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?
Edward Pomerantz (EP): I wrote my first play, The Garden, a one-act, when I was a student at the High School of Performing Arts. My playwriting teacher, Jacob A. Weiser, submitted the play to Samuel French, and Samuel French published it. I was 16, and got $50 for it. The next year I wrote Only a Game, another one-act, which Samuel French also published. This time I got $75. By now, I had given up all dreams of being the next Gene Kelly, and was officially a playwright. Expanding The Garden into a full-length play, I won First Prize in a Samuel French National Playwriting Contest, and after getting my MFA in playwriting from the Yale Drama School, I returned six years later as a Playwright-in-Residence to write my play Brisburial, which was produced by Woodie King, Jr.’s New Federal Theatre and published by Magic Circle Press. Cut to 2010, when, after 25 years of writing over 30 commissioned screenplays and teleplays, I’ve returned to playwriting, writing a play a year in the last 5 years. Staged readings of my plays have been presented in New York and Los Angeles, and this June, I’ve been invited to direct a production of my new play Electra: The Rewrite in Athens, Greece.
My proudest accomplishment is always finishing a play and living long enough to write it and see it on the stage.
OOB: You might hold the record for youngest Samuel French playwright ever published—you had a play published by us when you were only 16. Needless to say, you’ve seen the business of playwriting change and evolve over the years. What are some of the challenges that writers of today face that they might not have had in the past? What advantages do writers have in today’s world?
EP: The challenge that writers of today face is the same I faced (and am still facing) when I officially became a playwright with the publication of my first play by Samuel French in the early 1950′s. That challenge is getting your play read and paid attention to, especially if you’re doing something new and original that breaks with the current and entrenched sensibility governing what gets produced. The advantage that today’s writers have is the recognition of television and screenwriting as serious and legitimate art forms. In the early 50′s, you were still considered a hack or a sell-out if you weren’t writing the great American play or novel. Fortunately, Paddy Chayefsky and the Sid Caesar comedy writers changed all that, and today I’d be prouder to have my name on a Seinfeld or Sopranos episode than on any play currently on Broadway or Off-Broadway. The theater, however, is still my first love, and when I’m writing a play (a new one every year for the last five years), I always feel I’ve come home.
OOB: Much of your work as a writer has been as a screenwriter, though you’ve written many plays and a novel. When you have an idea for a new work, how do you go about selecting your medium? You’ve converted your novel Into It into a film Caught – can you talk a little bit about the challenges of adapting your story to a new style of writing?
EP: All my ideas for new work come from a strong image, scene, or situation that demands my writing it to understand why it haunts and obsesses me. Many times, I’ll start something as a novel and then hear and see it as a play. I love storytelling in all its forms, and I’m always looking for ways to bring the fluidity of movies and the density of the novel to the stage.
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?
EP: Like all my plays, The Peacekeeper started with a “haunting”–a newspaper clipping, a story, an image, a scene–that won’t let you rest until you write it. What finally unlocks and liberates the material is coming up with the way to enter it and travel through it. The key to The Peacekeeper was inventing a translator, who, haunted by the story she’s telling us, breaks into unexpected songs, which keep erupting and surprising her. I hope the audience will connect with the translator and her story, and be as haunted and surprised as she is.
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?
EP: The play has had two staged readings–at the Hayworth Theatre in Los Angeles, and at the Maxine Greene Literary Salon in Manhattan.
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?
EP: I’ll be producing it myself, which I usually do with other people.
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?
EP: My most cherished memories of the theatre are not the plays I saw. They’re the sound of Julie Harris’s voice in Member of the Wedding, Jo Mielziner’s set for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, a gesture of Ruth Gordon’s in The Matchmaker, and Alfred Lunt’s in The Visit, and Bert Lahr’s in Waiting for Godot. It’s memories like these that are still with me with every play I write, and made me want to be a playwright.