Friday, July 27, 2012

Meet the Playwright: Sam Byron (ANIMALS)


Sam Byron is a playwright based in New York. His plays include A Substitute for Margo (Out of the Ashes Theatre Co., Chicago, IL), The Rock and the Bird (NoBucks Theater, Ithaca, NY), Debt (Horse Trade Theater, New York City, and Dillingham Center for Performing Arts, Ithaca, NY), Brooklyn Vacancies (finalist, New Works Program at T. Schreiber Studio, New York City), Static (finalist, HotCity Theater’s Greenhouse Festival, St. Louis), and Animals (Manhattan Repertory Theatre, New York City). He has written numerous short plays, including 529 (Manhattan Theatre Source), Famous Dick (UglyRhino Productions), and How to Field Dress a Unicorn (Billy & Co.). He has worked in the literary offices of both the Atlantic Theater Company and the Public Theater, and is currently pursuing an MFA in Playwriting from The New School in New York City. He is the 2012 recipient of the New School for Drama’s Steinberg New Playwrights Fellowship.
  • We are so very excited to be staging your play Animals for the New York International Fringe Festival this year. Can you give us a bit of a synopsis of the play and provide some insight in terms of what inspired it?
A group of twenty-somethings attend an unofficial high school reunion. The house party, thrown by a former member of the “popular crowd,” becomes the backdrop for a myriad of sexual encounters both pleasurable and violent.

The inspiration for the play came from a break-up I went through about four years ago. I wanted to write about the frustrating chasm that exists between men and women when it comes to love and sex. As I explored this idea—and aged four years, loving and losing more along the way—the play found its way into more complex territory. The piece became about growing older, about realizing who your true friends are, and about the fallibility of your emotions when you are “in love.”
  • When did you know that you wanted to be a writer? What made you start writing plays?
I believe that all writers have some thing, some secret they hope to uncover, recover, understand, ignore, or some such thing. I certainly have one or two internal wounds that I think compel me to write, but the answer to the question “why?” is much simpler than some heartbreaking account of my personal life. I write because I have to. I know this because sometimes I don’t want to. Sometimes writing feels like the hardest thing I could do, but I do it anyway. I write because I have to understand what goes on around me and what goes on within me.

Playwriting, more than novel-writing or poetry, is the art of communication. A play does not exist without collaboration and compromise. A novel falls in the forest and makes a noise whether someone hears it or not, but a play is a citizen of the world around us. It demands to be acknowledged because, without its fellow citizens, it is nothing. I write plays because I am most interested in participating in that citizenship.
  • Who or what has been your biggest influence as a writer? What inspires you to get to the page?
Those are two very different questions. What gets me to the page are the every day idiosyncracies of human existence. I read recently about an actress rescued from the Titanic who then went off right away and starred in a movie about her experiences. She knew immediately that her trauma was marketable. I read that and I think, “That’s the world’s first reality TV star! There’s a play in there!”

In terms of influences, it’s hard to really say. I read all the time and feel like I take something from all of it. Sam Shepard taught me that I can do whatever I want on stage. He was really the first playwright I read and thought, “Wow. I want to do that.”
  • In terms of your creative process, do you have a particular ritual when it comes to writing? If so, can you share it with us?
I can’t wear shoes and write at the same time. I will if I have to, but God help the poor soul that has to decipher the scribbles that come from that.
  • I believe you obtained your MFA in Playwrighting from The New School. Is this also where you met Kristin Skye Hoffmann, the director for this production? Can you tell us a bit about that working relationship?
Kristin and I just completed the first third of our MFA track at the New School. She directed the first piece I wrote, which was a three-page site-specific play called SVP. We had known each other for about two months, and we set out around the West Village scouting locations with Kristin feeding me ideas to keep my brain storming. My name is on that script, but I couldn’t have done it without her.

The final scene of that play took place in the courtyard of a building on the corner of Charles St.and the West Side Highway. We were rehearsing there one day when this big black SUV pulled up and Martha Stewart got out. Stunned, we watched her breeze by us and into the building. Two seconds later we were ejected from the premises and I was rewriting the scene for a stoop up the block. I thought, if Martha Stewart wants to stop us, Kristin and I must be doing something right.
  • Can you tell us about any additional projects you are working on right now?
I have a few projects in the works. The first is the next Halloween, site-specific experience for UglyRhino Productions at the Brooklyn Lyceum. Following the success of last year’s CENTRALIA, I am developing a pseudo-murder mystery involving crazy occult ritual suicide in 1970s Gowanus.

I will also be developing a play under the tutelage of Jon Robin Baitz over the coming year about a congregation of Jews in search of a Rabbi and a young woman who is forced to rediscover her faith when she’s called upon to help in place of her dying father.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Meet the Cast: Leif Steinert (ANIMALS)



Leif Steinert (Robby) moved from Massachusetts to New York after graduating high school in 2004. Passing on college, he opted to take some acting classes in Manhattan and get a job (there have, in fact, been several jobs: a clerk in a laundry center, a U.S. census taker, a Central Park tour guide, a bartender, and a doorman dressed as a toy soldier in front F.A.O. Schwarz, just to name just a few). Over the years, he has learned countless lessons and had countless experiences that are of the kind that only New York can offer.
  • You’ll be performing in our upcoming production of Animals for the New York International Fringe Festival. Can you tell us some of your initial thoughts about the piece and your character? How are rehearsals going?
I play a guy named Robby who's just moved back home after being away for five years. He's a pleasure seeker who's trying cope with the many changes that are happening in his life. Rehearsals are going very well.
  • When did you know that you wanted to be an actor? How did you get started?
I didn't get good grades in high school, so my father gave me an ultimatum in my junior year: either to be locked in my room for 3 hours a night to make a desperate push for college or to join my school's production of West Side Story. I chose the latter, and fell in love with the sensation of being on stage in front of an audience.
  • Who or what do you consider to have been your biggest creative influences to date? Why?
I am influenced by my day-to-day life as it plays itself out. The basic human responses that life provokes inside of everyone on earth is what I go fishing for whenever I play a role.
  • What is your favorite part of the creative process before you perform for an audience? Do you have a particular pre-show ritual that you engage in before curtain? If so, can you share it with us?
The pre-show stuff depends on the part, and I guess my ritual is that I like to hug or connect with everybody in the cast before the stage manager calls for us to take our places. It's an expression of support, unity and gratitude for sharing the experience.The table work is my favorite part of the process because it's like preparing for a bank heist.
  • I believe this is your first time working with Wide Eyed. We’d like to get to know you a little better. Could you tell us a little bit about your last project? Is there something cool that you like to do in your spare time?
I’ve been enrolled at the New School for Drama's M.F.A program for the last year, which is where I’ve worked with Kristin [Hoffmann] and Sam [Byron] a couple of times. I just did a reading at M.C.C. for a play they are considering to produce. I love to ride my bicycle around the city.
  • Are you working on any additional projects at the moment? Care to share with us?
The other day, I got cast in a short film called Life in a Box. It's a great script, and I believe it will turn out to be something quite special.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Meet the Cast: Jeffrey Adams (ANIMALS)


Jeffrey Adams (Drew) received his BA in Theatre Arts at Santa Clara University and is currently working on his MFA at The New School for Drama. Recent attributes include: NSD's Venus in Fur (Thomas) and the many works of the Great American Playwright, Sam Byron...Box Colony Theatre's Women and Wallace (Wallace), Pear Avenue Theatre's Death of a Salesman (Happy), The 25th Annual...Spelling Bee (Chip), Diablo Theatre Co's White Christmas (Bob Wallace), Twelfth Night (Feste), Lyric Theatre's Cinderella (Prince), Playboy of the Western World (Christy), Erik Ehn's The Saint Plays (Genesius), Thoroughly Modern Millie (Jimmy), and the world premiere of Over the Mountain at Brava Theatre in San Francisco. Adams is so happy to be working with Wide Eyed and such a talented team on Animals, and is grateful for the opportunity and privilege of participating in this year's Fringe Festival. Thank you always for the love and support of faculty, family, and friends.
  • You’ll be performing in our upcoming production of Sam Byron's Animals for the New York International Fringe Festival. Can you tell us some of your initial thoughts about the piece and your character? How are rehearsals going?
After the initial table reading of the play, I was excited to be part of a piece that was so funny but also posed a moral and ethical challenge to audiences. Sam (Byron) always manages to create relatable dialogue and characters that mirror real life situations with an unexpected, signature twist, and Animals is no exception. The play also unlocks a relatively universal nostalgia with a prolonged homecoming, high school recollections, and the reunion of a group of dysfunctional friends. I play Drew, the group’s punching bag who is pushed to the limit. He’s a hopeless romantic, aspiring medical student, and delightfully neurotic with women. I think audiences will watch with “I went to college with that guy” in mind.

Rehearsals are going well. You rarely get to work with such incredibly talented people that you also happen to respect and consider close friends, and I am fortunate enough to say, that has been my experience with this project. The nature of the play requires us to be a tight knit group, and we became very close early on. The beauty of working with the dynamic duo of Sam and Kristin (Hoffmann) is that they allow creativity and are open to new ideas in the rehearsal room, which gives actors freedom to play, which is what we love.
  • When did you know that you wanted to be an actor? How did you get started?
I started acting when I was eight in community theatre productions where I grew up in California. I actually performed mostly in musicals, and my passion and interest in theatre continued to grow in high school and beyond. I remember playing Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha in 2003, and that being the role that sealed the deal for me. It was when I realized acting was the perfect fusion of the “character” and the “self,” where the story you are telling should teach you a little bit about who you are; that acting at its finest is self discovery.
  • Who or what do you consider to have been your biggest creative influences to date? Why?
I would say my parents are honestly my greatest creative influences. They were the first people to share the arts with me and expose me to theatre, music, television and really encourage imaginative exploration. My parents are both educators, and because of that, I see actors as teachers. My dad told me years ago one of my favorite quotations by Aldous Huxley: “The more you know, the more you see,” and I really try to approach every project and character with that in mind.
  • What is your favorite part of the creative process before you perform for an audience? Do you have a particular pre-show ritual that you engage in before curtain? If so, can you share it with us?
Getting to know the cast as an extension of your family is an important part of the process for me. You see these people every day for weeks, if not months on end, and you share something with them, an experience that only they can really understand. I love that. It’s something that you share with that group alone, and you will always have that.

Before I go onstage for a show, I pretty much go through the same checklist as a person about to embark on a two hour road trip. I use the restroom, get my fill of snacks, make sure everything I need with me is accounted for, swig some water and I’m off. Then right before I walk on stage, I dedicate the show to someone in my head...just as a reminder of the people that have helped me get there.
  • I believe this is your first time working with Wide Eyed. We’d like to get to know you a little better. Could you tell us a little bit about your last project? Is there something cool that you like to do in your spare time?
The last project I worked on was The Box Colony Theatre’s production of Women and Wallace at Theatre Row’s Studio Theatre. It’s the story of a little boy who witnesses his mother’s suicide and how that affects every relationship with women from that point on through the lens of Freudian Psychology.

In my spare time, I like to stay relatively low key. I love going to concerts, occasionally exploring the city, or even staying in with my girlfriend and ordering food and watching movies and television as a sort of character study, or homework. Watching talented actors apply their methods and techniques helps me complete the flipside to Huxley’s thought, so the more I see, the more I know.
  • Are you working on any additional projects at the moment? Care to share with us?
I guess my next big endeavor is starting an improvisational comedy group called Morning Stubble, a sketch based troupe that will hopefully start getting gigs around the city soon! I am looking forward to being a part of this year’s Fringe Festival with Animals, and hope to work with Wide Eyed again on future projects.

Friday, July 13, 2012

ANIMALS: Press Release


presents

 
 by Sam Byron 
Directed by Kristin Skye Hoffmann 

As part of the FringeNYC Festival 2012 

At THE KRAINE THEATRE 

Take the 6 train to Bleecker Street Station. Walk east on Bleecker to The Bowery, 
then north to E. 4th Street, then east to the theatre. 

TUE 8/14 @ 7:00-8:30 
THU 8/16 @ 4:15-5:45 
SUN 8/19 @ 2:15-3:45 
WED 8/22 @ 4:45-6:15
THU 8/23 @ 7:00-8:30