Kevin Anthony KAUTZMAN

NOTEPAD:from the desk of the DRAMATURG

In Then Waves, Kevin Kautzman’s dramatic exploration of the

dualities inherent within us, the dishonorably discharged Brady

suspects his son may not be his son at all, but the product of an

affair. Described by another character as the definition of “poet

warrior,” Brady fits the familiar image of hot-headed ex-military,

acting out passionately and violently. Yet he also speaks with an

unexpected eloquence, referencing Sisyphus and schadenfreude.

The more he tests his son, his wife and his closest friend, the

more violently he vacillates, so much so that at the start of each

scene, we’re not sure who will show up, the poet or the warrior.

SARAH SLIGHTDramaturg, Then Waves

RUTHEASTONNEW PLAY

SERIES

THEN WAVESBY KEVIN ANTHONY KAUTZMANMONDAY, FEB. 1 • 7 P.M. • at the PLAYWRIGHTS’ CENTER

A discharged American soldier returns from war to do violence upon his estranged son, who may not be his son at all. Set in the American Midwest, Then Waves explores the issues of violence’s echo, the cost of war, and the impulses toward destruction that ravage families and destroy the future.

Tickets are free: 612.332.7481 • INFO@PWCENTER.ORG

Both Poliglot Theater and the Living Theatre staged readings of Then Waves in the summer of 2008 in New York City, directed by John Hansen-Bravetti and Steve Capra respectively. The play was a finalist for the 2009 Yale Drama Series. More infomation at www.kevinkautzman.com.

IN YOUR OWN WORdS, WHAT IS THEN WAVES ABOUT?

It’s about the consequences of warmaking and the great lie that took place in the beginning

of this decade, for which people are still paying the price. It’s about that tragedy, that

unquantifiable price. Because you listen to the news, and you know, they throw out these

numbers and these statistics, but what are lost in all of that are the human stories.

The play shows the story of a young man and his family confronting the consequences

of an unjust war. His father comes back from the Middle East after being dishonorably

discharged—one of these shadow stories where we don’t hear the full tale. You hear about

these every so often, you know—a raid goes wrong and suddenly there are dead women

and children and someone has to pay. The father has PTSD, which is all too common, and

he becomes convinced that the son is not his own. And so he does violence upon him. So

the play uses that singular family drama as a way to approach the larger national theme, the

human theme, really—this idea of our dual nature.

TO WHAT dOES THE TITLE REfER?

It’s not the initial idea that people might have. I think people, when they read that, might

think of ocean waves or whatnot—waves of water. And that’s not the structure of the play.

The play is not meant to feel like that. Rather, the play uses the metaphor of the wave as a

scientific idea, as a crest and a trough. So the play has all kinds of duality inside of it.

The final line of the play contains that duality. I’m very fond of the final line of this play. It’s

uttered by Cailin, whose name, by the end of the play, has been changed to Collin, and that’s

his actual given name, which is explained in the play. Cailin/Collin says: “F—ing A. It’s about

time we had some rain.” To my ear, that contains the entire idea of the play, which is about

the dual nature of humanity—how we are monstrous and we want religion and poetry

at the same time. We want spiritual connection; we want to seek and to find; we sing; we

make art; but we exert this incredible energy toward warmaking and toward divisiveness.

This line also contains the structural conceit for the play. The play is structured to include

a lot of extremes. It begins with a poetic monologue, and the next scene is an incredibly

violent scene. And the second act begins with a monologue from Brady which is also

poetical but quite brutal. So there’s a lot of this stuff going on in the play.

WE SPOKE WITH PLAYWRIGHT KEVIN ANTHONY KAUTZMAN ABOUT HIS FEBRUARY 1 READING AT THE PLAYWRIGHTS’ CENTER.

WHEN CAILIN’S PARENTAgE IS CALLEd INTO qUESTION, YOU STAgE BOTH

POSSIBILITIES. IS THAT RELATEd TO YOUR THEMATIC IdEAS ABOUT dUALITY?

Yes, but it’s also strictly functional. It’s a strict representation of the psychic topography of

the play. The man who ascends a tower with a rifle and begins shooting at people randomly

has a very good reason to do this in his mind, a good narrative reason. The story running

through his mind is no less genuine than the story running through the minds of the people

who are the victims of this horror. So I think I’m justified in that choice by the fact that

whether or not Brady is Cailin’s father, in Brady’s mind, he is not.

dO THE CHARACTERS’ NAMES HAVE A PARTICULAR MEANINg?

All five names are symbolic. Brady means “broad,” as in broad shoulders. I think of him as a

kind of Atlas. He’s not “Atlas Shrugged,” he’s “Atlas Crushed.” He is the man crushed by this

system of violence that we have inherited, and we seem to be willing to perpetuate. Cailin

means “girl” in Gaelic; Colin means “dove”; for Thee, I think of Theona, invoking the idea of

“god” or “goddess.” Ryan actually means “the little king” in Gaelic. Isn’t that interesting?

WHERE dO YOU fINd THESE? dO YOU gO TO PARENTHOOd.COM?

[Laughs] Yeah, I actually think I did go to Parenthood.com. It’s funny, because when I started

writing this play, it was very shortly after I found out I was going to be a father. I think it is of

consequence that a play which is so much about fatherhood would come out of the mind

of a man who has just found out he’s going to be a father.

So I’m really interested in names. And the names of characters are important in drama.

Some playwrights do it, other playwrights don’t. But often, if you pick at names in plays a bit,

you’ll find out they are symbolic.

EVERY SCENE IN THEN WAVES OPENS WITH A qUOTE fROM THE STAbAT MATEr,

ANd YOU INCLUdE THE fULL LATIN TExT ANd TRANSLATION AT THE ENd Of

THE SCRIPT. HOW dId THAT COME TO BE PART Of THE PLAY?

I was at the Basilica of St. Mary here in Minneapolis, and there was a concert of a Stabat

Mater. This is a traditional Catholic form—it’s an old poem, and it’s still included in the Cycle

of Days that nuns and monks will go through. It’s also a certain subclass of religious music.

They sing the Latin of this cycle of images describing the woe of the Virgin Mother at the

foot of the cross.

As someone who is inclined toward a mystic interpretation of the Christ story, I heard

that and it really moved me. And I thought, my God, that’s a wonderful narrative structure.

I decided, I’m going to include this, because I realized that I had been writing Golgotha. I

didn’t realize that was happening until I heard that. I had written a scene in the play—the

scene between Brady and Ryan, standing on top of this hill with the flag pole, and Brady is

leaving the responsibility of raising and lowering the flag to Ryan. And it occurred to me,

well, that could be Golgotha, and that flagpole could be emblematic of the cross. This idea

of trying to convert the flagpole into a substitute for that image was, I think, quite useful.

If you’re not disposed to the Christian allegory, you know, you can take it or leave it. But

there are certain human truths in that, often just as readily conveyed by other religions. I

think it was Peter Brook in his book The Empty Space who talks about the flagpole. Or—

not the flagpole. He talks about the voodoo pole. And the way that voodoo practitioners

will use the pole as a way of conjuring the gods out of Africa. I read that after writing this,

and I thought, “My God, now I have a voodoo pole.”

HOW dId YOU BECOME A PLAYWRIgHT?

I took an acting class with the Camden Civic Theatre; they’re now the Workhouse Theatre

Company in North Minneapolis (not to be confused with [Playwrights’ Center resident

company] Workhaus Collective—zee Vurk-haus Kol-lec-tive, auf Deutsch). I took a class with

Jeff Redman, and they invited me to be a company member. Right around that time, I met

my wife. She was invited to study neuroscience in London, and we got married and moved,

and six weeks later I was in the Young Writers Programme in the Royal Court Theatre,

which is where I would like to say I found my aesthetic; or, I was exposed to an aesthetic

that approximates my own, not just at the Royal Court, but in London.

At the Court I was invited into the core writers group, I started a writers group, and that

was really my year of awakening to the theater. And I came there with such a naiveté.

You know, the room that they did work in for the Young Writers Programme in 2006 was

the same room that Harold Pinter had been rehearsing in earlier that very same day, and

everyone was all aflutter, because he had won the Nobel Prize, and here he was rehearsing

to do Krapp’s Last Tape. And I said, “Who’s Harold Pinter?”

And it went a long way. Now, of course, I know who Pinter is, but you don’t have to be this

enfant, this child of the theater. I mean, that works for some people, but—I don’t want to

be antagonistic here—but it’s important to find your own voice. For me, it’s worked that I

haven’t been one of these gushing neophytes of the theater since I was 12. I studied other

things. So when I come to the theater I see it as a vehicle for my thoughts and ideas and

not purely as a tradition that’s occupied by these giants that I could never possibly touch.

WHAT dO YOU LIKE OR dISLIKE IN A PLAY?

I do not attend the theater to see essays that have been staged. Spare me your essays,

please. If you want to write journalism, write journalism.

I am also very wary of a scene that I keep seeing repeated across many different plays. The

scene proceeds as follows: a journalist or a TV reporter or a graduate student, or someone

from kind of a progressive liberal Democratic background, confronts the Other in an

interview. This often happens at the beginning of the play. As soon as I see that, unless that

interview almost instantaneously reveals something that indicates the stakes in this play are

extraordinarily high, I am going to turn off like a light bulb.

I am so sick of seeing that scene. Because there’s nothing at risk. And often I feel as if the

playwright writing that scene feels as if he or she is telescoping the audience into this

Wonderland of Otherness—you know, the homeless person, or the victim of genocide, or

… I don’t know. The issue. It’s always that issue. And the reason it gets staged is because, of

course, we’re all bleeding heart liberals in this practice, more or less; many of us are activists;

that’s fine, that’s wonderful, but that scene is just not dramaturgically sound. I’m not saying

we shouldn’t write about these serious topics. Write that scene if you must. But don’t start

up with the journalist fumbling with his or her stuff. Start up with the Other, the homeless

guy, shooting smack. Something dramatic, I don’t care. God, I hate that scene.

WHAT dO YOU LIKE?

I love a well-written script. I love the idea that there is an auteur behind it, a mind behind it,

a writer whose work I’m going to be interested in seeing and reading again and again.

I love work that is written and/or staged in such a way that we break down conventions

and play with people’s idea of space and theatre. I love when the subject matter matches

the staging in some extraordinary way. That gets my attention and usually leaves me feeling

reassured about theatre’s relevance and excited to go write for the medium.

If you want to write a play about homeless people, please don’t write another essay. Don’t

stick a journalist or a graduate student or a writer or artist anywhere inside the play, if you

can manage. Write about the homeless. I would love to see a play written and staged in

such a way that it feels like everyone in the theater is homeless. Take away everyone’s coats

and shoes. Don’t heat the theater. Light it only with actual fire if you can manage to do that.

The theater has such plasticity. It can do things that film cannot do, that television cannot do,

and that the written word alone cannot do. And it should do those things.

THE DWINDLESBY BARBARA fIELdMONDAY, MAR. 1 • 7 P.M. • at the PLAYWRIGHTS’ CENTER

A year of free room and board, scintillating conversation, and compelling company at a renowned artists’ colony? Sounds too good to be true to Edward MacKenzie, a has-been artist whose career once was. He’s looking for inspiration, but what he discovers is a collection of temperamental artists—and a corpse. Along the way, he has a close encounter with his past and his future.

Tickets are free: 612.332.7481 • INFO@PWCENTER.ORG

IT’S ALWAYS gOOd TO SHARE.facebook.com/pwcentertwitter.com/pwcenter

pwcenter.org

THE PLAYWRIGHTS’ CENTER

2301 E. FRANkLIN AvE., MINNEAPoLIS, MN 55406

P 612.332.7481 • F 612.332.6037 • INFO@PWCENTER.ORG

UPCOMINg EVENTSTHE RUTH EASTON NEW PLAY SERIES

BARBARA fIELd has had work produced across the U.S., Canada, and Europe. She served as playwright-in-residence at the distinguished Guthrie Theater from 1974 to 1981. Her numerous translations and adaptations have earned awards and national tours, and include an adaptation of A Christmas Carol that has been part of the

Guthrie’s and the Kansas City Rep’s seasons for 34 years. Her original work includes Neutral Countries (1983 Humana Festival, Best American Play); Coming of Age; Quality Time; Boundary Waters (1992 Dramalogue Award); Off the Ice; The Book of Vashti; and the libretto for the new opera Rosina (composer Hiram Titus), commissioned and produced by the Minnesota Opera. Field is a founding member of the Playwrights’ Center.