Dialogue 4.6: Laural Meade

From the desk of the PRODUCINGARTISTICDIRECTOR

Laural MEADE

AN INTERVIEW WITH LAURAL MEADE2010-2011 SEASON06

FAC

EBO

OK.

CO

M /

PWC

ENTE

RTW

ITTE

R.C

OM

/ PW

CEN

TER

WW

W.P

WC

ENTE

R.O

RG

JEREMY B. COHENProducing Artistic DirectorThe Playwrights’ Center

From the desk of the PRODUCINGARTISTICDIRECTOR

Laural MEADE

AN INTERVIEW WITHLAURAL MEADE2010-2011 SEASON 06 FA

CEBO

OK.C

OM

/ PWC

ENTER

TWITTER.C

OM

/ PWC

ENTER

WW

W.PW

CEN

TER.ORG

JEREMY B. COHENProducing Artistic DirectorThe Playwrights’ Center

Cover design by Very, Inc.

The Suffragist RoadshowBY Laural MeadePLAYWRIGHTS’ CENTER CORE WRITER

In 1915, a group of women set out on a cross-country road trip to rally support behind national suffrage. As they travel, they fi nd out that freedom means different things to different people, and not all suffragists’ priorities are the same. Complex and comical, The Suffragist Roadshow is a semi-fi ctionalized account of life at the intersection of gender, race, and politics.

Project journey:

DEVELOPED AND RECEIVED SUPPORT FROM THE• 2005-06 MARK TAPER

FORUM WRITER’S LAB

WORKSHOP AT • OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE, SPRING 2008

WORKSHOP AND READING AT • THE PLAYWRIGHTS’ CENTER, MAY 2009

READING AT • BOOTLEG THEATER, JUNE 2010

WORKSHOP AND READING IN • THE PLAYWRIGHTS’ CENTER’S RUTH

EASTON NEW PLAY SERIES, MAY 2011

“I dreamt a man set off a big balloon from the top of the White House. And we took a picture as it was happening. A lovely group picture, but by the time the balloon came down the picture had turned into very odd, very … unsettling individual portraits …” –Caroline, The Suff ragist Roadshow

There is a transformative and meteoric moment in Laural Meade’s new play when the suff ragists realize winning the vote will mean that the issues on which they passionately disagree—marriage, race, immigration—will suddenly be subject to the opinion of every other woman in the car. That once they succeed, they will also become rivals.

The Suff ragist Roadshow is a play about passion and order, as diverse and confl icting as

politics can be. It’s about the painful choice between either holding fi rm to one’s values or allowing them to take a back seat in the name of the greater good—especially pickled in a time of conservatism. This piercingly intelligent and very funny new play asks us to look at change as it really happens in America (back then, and still now) in the most utopian sense of democracy—not in landslide elections or landmark decisions, but town by town, person by person, and in spite of the vast fractures in any group of us.

Please join us for our fi nal 2010-11 Ruth Easton New Play Series event, a delightful and transgressive new theatrical work by our wondrous Core Writer, Laural Meade.

The RUTH EASTON NEW PLAY SERIESpresents free readings of new work by today’s most exciting playwrights. For more information visit www.pwcenter.org.

Also sponsored by

May 2, 2011 • 7 pm • Free • At the Playwrights’ CenterReserve seats: 612.332.7481 x10 • [email protected]

WE TALKED WITH CORE WRITER LAURAL MEADE IN ADVANCE OF HER MAY 2 RUTH EASTON NEW PLAY SERIES READING of THE SUFFRAGIST ROADSHOW.

What, in your oWn Words, is The SuffragiST roadShow about? It’s a fictionalized account of an actual publicity stunt/organizing campaign staged by a group of suffragists in 1915. They drive a Chrysler touring car across the country, starting in San Francisco with a giant send-off at the Panama-Pacific Exposition and ending three months later at the opening of Congress in Washington, D.C. Along the way they encounter all of the challenges that such a trip would present to anyone, politics or no: bad roads, no signage, no street lights, very few maps and really unreliable cars.

But what makes the trip astounding is that they were all women —and in 1915 women just didn’t do this sort of thing. Men barely did. Most importantly, it was a radical political action. They held rallies, gathered petition signatures, organized meetings, and made planned and impromptu speeches. These women were brave and brazen—considering that just making a speech in public was considered taboo.

hoW about thematically?What mainly gets me is the possibility of the trip as a metaphor for the early women’s movement as a whole, and for the place we currently find ourselves vis-à-vis sexism and feminism. The car is this grotesque but beautiful machine that carries these disparate personalities as they all try to get on the same page and make forward progress.

I mean, imagine trying to organize all of the country’s men into some kind of unified front. That couldn’t be done—so why would we think that women could or should do the same? Of course, we did—much to our credit. But against incredible internal and external opposition.

And considering that sexism still exists in a variety of subtle, pervasive ways (in addition to the blatant expressions of it on billboards and in our paychecks), the question remains: how are we, as a group, supposed to address inequality

when we are no more a “group” than, say, men are? I’m not sure there is a single answer—that’s probably why I’m writing the play.

What grabbed you about this story? Almost all of my recent work for adult audiences focuses on true stories from American history near the turn of the 20th century. This particular yarn has so much going for it: the event itself, the personalities, the political resonances. It’s also educational and inspiring—working on the piece has been a great way to learn about the early women’s movement, and its iterations since. And, I hope, it’s a compelling way to examine where we, men and women, find ourselves now.Also, I haven’t written a road-trip play before. I’ve seen a couple, but it’s not anything I’ve tried. How often do you get to stage an engine breakdown or getting stuck in the mud? It offered a lot of theatrical possibilities—it’s a great hook.

do you generally do a lot of research?I do. It’s a big part of the process for me. This time around there were three main sources of inspiration: the actual dispatches from the road that Sara Bard Field, the expedition’s leader, wrote for The Suffragist Magazine; a biography about African-American civil rights activist Ida B. Wells called To Keep the Waters Troubled; and Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement—a book that details, in straightforward academic language, the intricacies of the arguments for and against suffrage used by the various partisan camps.

hoW did those sources help inform the play?Well, when I looked at these accounts together, an amazing picture of fractionalization began to form. For all its unity, the movement actually had its own serious share of classism, racism, jingoism. Women, of course, had different

“For all its unity, the movement

actually had its own serious share of

classism, racism, jingoism. ”

reasons they wanted the vote and different things they wanted to do with the vote once they got it. And for some women, that meant disenfranchising other women who they felt shouldn’t be voting—women of color, or uneducated women, or women who weren’t married, or who didn’t have a certain class or social standing, naturalized immigrants, and so on.

Looking at it this way, the story of the women’s movement becomes the story of idiosyncratic individuals who have both incredible strengths and awful flaws. For me the ultimate idea—and I want to make it an elegant argument—is a feminist thematic that says we are deserving of equality not just because we are as good as men, but because we are actually as dark and complicated as men. It’s in this way that we are fully human.

What Will you be Working on in this Workshop? I just wanna make the play better! And here I’m thinking basic quality writing: I’d like to deepen and complexify the characters, tighten the construction, turn up the conflict, heighten the theatricality. But the biggest challenge for me right now is figuring out exactly what I’m trying to say. There’s sooo much to choose from. What are the essential ideas of the piece? Thematically and theatrically. Or, at least, what are the questions I’m trying to ask?I’m also concentrating on roughing it up. You put anybody, women or men, then or now, in a car together—six of them in one car across the country for three months—it’s gonna get messy, you know? Right now, it gets rough in the car. But not as much as it could. I’m asking myself—what else could go wrong?

“You put anybody, women or men,

then or now, in a car together—six of

them in one car across the country

for three months—it’s gonna get

messy, you know?”

is this Where the fictionalization comes in?Indeed. Because I usually write from true stories, the narratives I work on have already been created by the people who lived them. You don’t have to invent or embellish the plot, because history has given you the plot.

The thing with this story is, the real cross-country trip was actually uneventful in terms of dramatic conflict—other than the general low-grade opposition that the women were sometimes met with along the way. But the larger movement was chock full of conflict. So I’ve fictionalized the story by putting some women in the car who were figures in the movement, but who weren’t members of the expedition. I’ve added a woman of color, a woman who speaks almost no English, a woman who’s much older than the younger radicals who are leading the trip, and a woman who’s an anti-suffragist. And I’ve created narratives for each.

What do you like or dislike in a play? I like smart, sophisticated work that has a sense of politics and playfulness. I guess I’m most attracted to pieces that make some sort of large ideological leap—a thematic or theatrical element that’s bold or dangerous. Best if it’s both. I’m happy to be exposed to old ideas—if they’re examined in new ways.

I think I’ve had my most seminal experiences as an audience member in two types of shows: big beautiful Broadway musicals and old-school American avant-garde. I’m a sucker for a gorgeous song and high kick just as much as I am for some super alternative post-post-modern deconstruction. Whatever it is, as long as it’s done really well, I’m in!

“I’m a sucker for a gorgeous song

and high kick just as much as I am for

some super alternative post-post-

modern deconstruction.”

is there something those eXtremes haVe in common that attracts you?Well, for them to be done well, there has to be a certain level of virtuosity and inventive creativity—and that’s always a draw. And both forms have in common a deep awareness of the live theatrical event that flies in the face of a filmic approach. You know, Oklahoma’s not trying to put it over on you that you’re not in a theater. Same can be said for the Wooster Group, SITI Company, or Mabou Mines. Both types of work ask the audience to be highly aware of the live nature of the event. To me, because of this, they consistently admit that we’re all in the room together breathing the same air and having a shared communal experience—with the artists and our fellow audience members. That means a lot to me. I think it’s joyful, uplifting. It admits our humanness—that, like the women in the car, we’re all in this crazy thing together.

I love a play that, in the end, transcends the basics of relationships or love or family and moves on to bigger questions of social justice, or more elusive explorations of the mysterious. Like memory or pleasure or the shadow self. I’m grateful to be asked to take a hard look at what is actually going on in the bigger picture, and how I might be part of the dynamic. I especially respond to theater that does this while also examining the theatrical experience itself. Theater about theater always makes me happy.

“I love a play that, in the end,

transcends the basics of relationships

or love or family and moves on to

bigger questions of social justice, or

more elusive explorations of the

mysterious.”

It’s odd that you ask me this because, come to think of it – those two extremes (musicals and experimental work) are both options I’m thinking of for The Suffragist Roadshow. In its current version, it’s a relatively straightforward piece of comedic realism. That’s not my normal aesthetic, but this time around I wanted to try to write a straight play with broad appeal. Truthfully, I think all the time about turning it in to a musical, or into a much more theatricalized experimental event. Maybe it will ultimately be both…!

The Playwrights’ Center is a fiscal year 2011 recipient of an Institutional Support grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is funded, in part, by the arts and cultural heritage fund as appropriated by the Minnesota State Legislature with money from the Legacy Amendment vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008.

the playWrights’ center

champions playWrights

and plays to build

upon a liVing theater

that demands neW and

innoVatiVe Works.

The Playwrights’ Center fuels the theatrical

ecosystem with new ideas, new talents, and

new work—the future of the American theater.

One of the nation’s most generous and well-

respected artistic organizations, the Playwrights’

Center focuses on both supporting playwrights

and bringing new plays to production. Work

developed at the Playwrights’ Center has been

seen on stages nationwide.

share the loVefacebook.com/pwcenter

twitter.com/pwcenter

pwcenter.org

~

2301 E. Franklin avE., MinnEapolis, Mn 55406 • (612) 332-7481 • [email protected]

Dialogue 4.6: Laural Meade

Documents

Transcript of Dialogue 4.6: Laural Meade