Victoria STEWART

NOTEPAD:from the desk of the DIRECTOR

Imagine being unattractive. Now imagine being very, very rich and

unattractive. You just got better looking, didn’t you?

How much of our self-worth is tied up in those two things? I was

always told not to talk about religion and politics, but what I’ve

come to realize is the thing we really don’t talk about is money—

but oh, how delicious when we do. The things we discover. In Rich

Girl, Victoria Stewart boldly goes forth into the world of money,

love, trust and family. She does it with a keen eye and sharp wit

and it’s a conversation I am thrilled to be a part of.

GIOVANNA SARDELLIDirector, Rich Girl

RUTHEASTONNEW PLAY

SERIES

RICH GIRLBY VICTORIA STEWARTMONDAY, APRIL 5 • 7 P.M. • at the PLAYWRIGHTS’ CENTER

When Claudine meets Henry, a starving artist, she falls head over heels. Her mother, a financial guru, has her doubts. Is Henry everything her daughter has been looking for? Or is he after only one thing? A modern-day adaptation of Henry James’ Washington Square, Rich Girl is about women and their relationship to men, mothers, and money—in that order.

Tickets are free: 612.332.7481 x10 • INFO@PWCENTER.ORG

IN YOuR OWN WORdS, WhAT IS Rich GiRl ABOuT?

It’s a romantic comedy about money and what it does to people. We’re at this

point in American history where everyone is looking at what they have and

what they don’t have, so I was interested in looking at this one person whose

life revolves around money. Eve, the mother character, is a financial guru and she

has this job where she thinks and talks about money all the time. I wanted to

know how that would affect her personal life.

When I was doing research for this, I was really interested in Suze Orman, who’s

one of the more popular financial talking heads. One of her key points is how

women deal with money—how often women give money away instead of

saving, giving it to friends or boyfriends. In many ways I think it’s because women

have an anxiety about money; they don’t want to take responsibility for it.

Another thing Suze Orman talks about is how the first lessons you learn about

money are through your parents’ relationship to their own finances. The play is

loosely based on the Henry James novel Washington Square, and James’ female

characters often inherit their money, and then they don’t know what to do

with all the power that they have. And I feel that that’s true with Claudine, the

daughter character. Her wealth has always been this burden; it separates her

from other people. But because the wealth is her mother’s, the money defines

her but is not part of her.

So I was trying to figure out how Claudine’s relationship to wealth could be so

different from her mom’s. Because obviously her mother has gained power from

money whereas Claudine’s very passive and can’t figure out what she wants to

do with her life—until she finds Henry, and then he’s what she wants to do with

her life. It’s the only time she’s ever gone against her mother’s wishes, and it’s the

first real choice Claudine has ever made.

WE TALKED WITH PLAYWRIGHT VICTORIA STEWART IN ADVANCE OF HER APRIL 5 READING AT THE PLAYWRIGHTS’ CENTER.

dId ThE PLAY COmE ABOuT BECAuSE Of ThE fINANCIAL CRISIS, OR

WAS ThAT juST A COINCIdENCE?

I started it before the crash, but I did a huge amount of the work after the crash

happened. A lot of times you come at a play because you’re curious about some

aspect of what’s going on in the world and you want to explore something

you know nothing about. I’m a pretty typical person with my own finances; I’m

lackadaisical about them, and I don’t know as much as I should. So it was just

something I was interested in exploring as a topic. And then the crash happened

and suddenly everybody was obsessed with their 401(k)s and whether or not

their lifestyles were sustainable.

WhAT WILL YOu fOCuS ON IN YOuR WORkShOP?

It’s going to be great, because I have a wonderful working relationship with Maggie

[Chestovich] and I really wanted to hear her play this role. And then I have a

terrific cast, Charity Jones, Mo Perry, and Wade Vaughn.

You always have a laundry list of things that you’re working on. I’m still tweaking

Act Two, because Act Twos are always difficult, and the climax is a hard thing to

get right. I might even stage one scene. It might be really jarring to have a reading

and then suddenly have one scene three-quarters of the way through staged. I

don’t know.

But often, when you have a comedy, you want to be able to hear it with as many

different audiences as possible, and see where people are paying attention. There’s

I’M DRAWN TO ANY KIND OF

THEATER THAT MAKES ME LEAN

FORWARD AND WONDER WHAT’S

GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT.

—VICTORIA STEWART

a real gear change in Act Two, and it becomes a much more serious play. It’s

interesting to hear an audience react to that.

FissuRes: lost and Found, WhICh YOu WROTE IN COLLABORATION

WITh SEVERAL OThER ARTISTS, RECENTLY WENT uP AT ThE humANA

fESTIVAL ANd GOT SOmE GREAT REVIEWS. hOW dId ThAT CREATIVE

PROCESS COmPARE TO WORkING SOLO?

In many ways it’s impossible to compare the two experiences. What’s been

fascinating about Fissures is that you have four very, very different writers, and then

several other very different perspectives in theater, when you include Dominique

[Serrand] and Steve Epp and Nathan Keepers.

When you put all of those people together, you have to kind of negate your

personality in some ways—not in a bad way, but you have to let go of “Well,

this is the way I like it.” You constantly have to find this balance between all these

different perspectives. Which works quite well for the play, because the play is

about all these different perspectives on identity and memory.

With your own play, you take complete ownership. You have no backup. I’ve

enjoyed working on Fissures, and I would do something like that again, but in

terms of putting myself wholeheartedly into a play, it helps when it’s all mine.

hOW dId YOu GET STARTEd AS A PLAYWRIGhT?

I was actually a professional stage manager for a long time, right out of college. I’d

worked on a lot of new plays with the playwright in the room—plays by Paula

Vogel, Naomi Wallace, David Rabe—but writing plays seemed very beyond my

reach.

So I was working on this Peter Sellars opera in Europe, when out of nowhere, in

one week, I got my first idea for a play and my grandfather died, leaving me a little

bit of money, just enough to change my life. Suddenly, I could afford grad school.

So I made this really funky switch, where I decided, “Okay, I’m going to go to grad

school for playwriting.” I wrote the play that I had had the idea for, applied to grad

school with that one play, and got into Iowa. And became a playwright!

YOu ANd YOuR huSBANd CORY hINkLE ARE BACk-TO-BACk

IN ThIS YEAR’S RuTh EASTON NEW PLAY SERIES. SO I hAVE TO

ASk—ESPECIALLY SINCE ThIS PLAY IS dEdICATEd TO CORY—If YOu

COuLd GIVE mE ThE RuNdOWN ON hOW YOu TWO mET.

We didn’t know each other at all until we both came here to Minneapolis on

the Jerome Fellowship. The Jeromes—we were constantly hanging around in a

cluster, and at that time we were getting free tickets to plays, sometimes three or

four times per week. So all of the Jeromes would go to these plays and get drinks

afterwards but Cory and I never spent time alone with each other—there was

always another Jerome around. And finally, I made the move to try to hang out

with him one-on-one—“You know, let’s just go and see a movie.” And we flirted

with each other for a while, and then finally, “one fateful night …” That’s our

courtship in a nutshell.

fAST-fORWARd TO ThIS YEAR, ANd YOu TWO juST hAd A BABY BOY.

hOW’S hE dOING?

Silas is doing great! He’s three weeks old now. Cory and I joke that we’re not

going to let him be an artist—he has to be an engineer or stockbroker or

something.

fINALLY, WhAT dO YOu LIkE OR dISLIkE IN A PLAY?

I’m drawn to any kind of theater that makes me lean forward and wonder what’s

going to happen next. And in terms of what I personally like writing, I really like

writing for certain actors, and I really love writing great characters. I usually start

with a character and move outward from there. So that character-driven work

really excites me.

Partially because I was a stage manager, I have really broad taste. I grew up

watching a lot of avant-garde theater, so I’m really intrigued by that, but I love

story, and I love narrative. So plays that can do both of those things—mix a sense

of theatricality and a sense of story and narrative—make me really happy.

CORY hINkLE is the recipient of two Jerome fellowships and received his M.F.A. in Playwriting from Brown University. His plays have been produced or developed at the SPF Summer Play Festival, Illusion Theater, Rattlestick, Salvage Vanguard, Workhaus Collective, P73/Yale Residency, Hangar Theater, ART,

Guthrie Theater, Williamstown Theater Festival, and Red Eye Collective. Cory has been commissioned by the Guthrie and Actors Theatre of Louisville and is a former MacDowell Colony fellow, Sewanee Writer’s Conference fellow, and recipient of a Jerome Travel and Study Grant. He has been a finalist for the O’Neill Playwrights Conference, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and the Heideman Award.

LITTLE EYESBY CORY hINkLEMONDAY, MAY 3 • 7 P.M. • at the PLAYWRIGHTS’ CENTER

After his father disappears, 10-year-old Martin believes he can hear the Voice of God. When a mysterious man from the mayor’s office arrives selling The Project, Martin sees a way to find his missing father and bring himself closer to the Lord. Little Eyes is a darkly funny exploration of American fear, denial, and religious fundamentalism in the months following 9/11.

Tickets are free: 612.332.7481 x10 • 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

WATCh ThE VIdEO TRAILER ONLINE ATPWCENTER.ORG.