An interview withMARCUS GARDLEY02

PROJECT JOURNEY• PRODUCED BY YALE REPERTORY THEATRE, MARCH 2006

• OPTIONED FOR BROADWAY BY ELLIOT MARTIN PRODUCTIONS

• WORKSHOP & READING AT THE PLAYWRIGHTS’ CENTER’S RUTH EASTON NEW PLAY SERIES, JANUARY 2012

Oscar Clifton prefers to live his memories rather than his life. But when his estranged grandson comes calling after 18 years, Oscar must face a very different version of his past. dance of the holy ghosts is a poetic family drama that waltzes from the hilarious innocence of a childhood crush to the heartbreak of a ruined marriage, a memory-scape that arouses all the senses.

JANUARY 9, 2012 • 7 PM • AT THE PLAYWRIGHTS’ CENTER • FREERESERVE SEATS: info@pwcenter.org • (612) 332-7481 x10 • www.pwcenter.org

The Playwrights’ Center is wheelchair-accessible.

DANCE OF THE HOLY GHOSTS A PLAY ON MEMORY

BY MARCUS GARDLEY

THE 2011-12 RUTH EASTONNEW PLAY SERIESpresents free readings of new work by today’s most exciting playwrights. For more information visit www.pwcenter.org.

Also sponsored by

JEREMY B. COHENFROM PRODUCING ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

Of the scores of plays developed in the Ruth Easton Lab each year, few have already experienced the trial-by-fire that is a full production. But the beauty of theater is that no play need ever be completely finished, and occasionally we have the exciting opportunity to provide additional support to a playwright who is drawn to an earlier work, armed with new insights and new perspective.

For Marcus, that return is especially dramatic. In 2006—two years out of Yale Drama School—Marcus’s dance of the holy ghosts premiered at Yale Rep, kicking off a swarm of productions, awards and comparisons to August Wilson, Tennessee Williams and Federico García Lorca. Now, in his first year as a Playwrights’ Center Core Writer, Marcus explores a completely new draft of the play that helped launch him to prominence—a profoundly personal story that swims between the real and the remembered, and always to the tune of Marcus’s signature poetic lyricism.

I invite you to join us for our second Ruth Easton New Play Series event of the season and to revel in one of this season’s exciting new Core Writers—Marcus Gardley and his passionate and soulful dance of the holy ghosts: a play on memory.

OSCAR

You got her eyes. Her

memories are in your

eyes, Marcus. Close

em. Close em and see.

MARCUS

There’s no time for

more travels down

memory lane, Oscar.

We’re going to be

late.

OSCAR

But you need my story.

I got a version that

ain’t never been heard

before. It’s truth

... see it. It’s in

my blood, stretching

my brain muscle like

brass. Pulling, filling

the alley ways of

my mind. See it. It

blows, it breathes ...

—dance of the holy

ghosts: a play on memory

by Marcus Gardley

WHAT, IN YOUR OWN WORDS, IS DANCE OF THE HOLY GHOSTS

ABOUT?

It’s a play about a young man who’s going to grant his mother’s last wish.

On her deathbed, she asks him to get her father to sing at her funeral. Her

father, Oscar, used to be a well-known blues singer, and she wants him

to finally be present and do something for her. So the son—who’s like a

mama’s boy—is going to do his best to get the grandfather to the funeral.

WHAT WAS THE INSPIRATION FOR THE PLAY?

It’s semi-autobiographical. When I was growing up, the only memory I have

of my grandfather was him hitting me when I was six or seven because I

broke his gumball machine. And I remember him being very distant from my

mom. That was the only time I visited him, and unfortunately he died soon

after that.

I also had some fragments of stories about him that family members told

me. I knew that he caught my grandmother in bed with another man and

killed the man in cold blood, and tried to kill her, and she fled to California.

Then three years later he became sheriff of the same town in which he

killed this man, because, you know, it was an honor killing. So I started

to put all of those pieces together and create a theater piece as a way of

figuring out who he was.

HOW IS THIS PIECE SIMILAR OR DIFFERENT FROM YOUR PREVIOUS

WORKS?

This is the only slightly autobiographical piece I’ve ever written. I never

actually wrote it to be produced, initially. I did it as an exercise, and the

response I got was overwhelmingly positive, so then I just took a stab at

trying to get it produced. It was my first major production—they did it at

MARCUS GARDLEYAn interview with

Yale Rep in 2006. So it’s deeply personal. With my other work, I have a lot

of distance from the characters in the play. Everyone in this play, I know

personally—including myself. So it was hard to write.

WHAT’S CHANGED SINCE THE LAST VERSION OF THE SCRIPT?

A lot has changed. The main thing is that it was hard for me to write myself,

because the Marcus character is the same age I was when I was writing it.

So it was hard for me to step outside of myself and honestly describe who I

was at that time. I felt like the character was underwritten. But now, because

I’m much older and there’s distance, I can look back and try to understand

some of the things I was going through. I just have a different view on it

because of life experience. So I think the Marcus character is fleshed out

more in the current draft. Also, with the character of Oscar—again, I’m much

older, so I have a more objective viewpoint. I also tried to make Oscar even

more different from his grandson. They’re like the Odd Couple; they have

that kind of relationship. I think it just raises the stakes.

WHAT ARE YOU PLANNING TO FOCUS ON IN YOUR RUTH EASTON

WORKSHOP?

I’ll probably tweak a scene or two during the workshop. But mainly it’s just

going to be the first time I’ve heard this draft.

YOU REFER TO YOURSELF AS A POET-PLAYWRIGHT. TELL ME ABOUT

THE ROLE OF POETRY IN YOUR WORK AND LIFE.

I’ve always been a poet. I actually don’t remember ever not writing poetry.

My mother was an avid reader and all of my siblings are writers, so writing

was sort of instilled in me at a young age. When I got into theater, I guess

I’d been writing poetry for so long that it just came naturally to me. Then

I started reading Federico García Lorca’s work, and you know, he says “a

play is a poem standing up.” I really loved that idea, that theater can be

both. I feel like we speak in poetry; people speak in poetic language all the

time, but we don’t view it as poetry.

I think what’s great about poetry is that it can really set the mood of a

scene, but it can also deepen character in a profound way, because poetry

is singing; it’s music. I find music to be the most powerful way to express

emotion—to lure your audience, but also to make them feel a very specific

type of emotion. I use poetry for that effect. You know, you only have a

short amount of time with an audience anyway, and you’re trying to get a

lot of ideas across. Poetry, in a very beautiful way, can really hone in on the

musicality of a character.

WHAT WAS YOUR PATH TO BECOMING A PLAYWRIGHT?

I kind of stumbled into playwriting. I never really pursued it. I was an actor

at first, and then I sort of gave that up. Then I took a creative writing course

because I thought it would be easy, and when we got to the playwriting

section, one of my teachers said, you really have a knack for writing plays,

you should try your hand at it. Honestly, I just liked the fact people was

saying the work was good.

Then I took a one-on-one class with a professor who was a playwight, and

he stopped telling me that the work was good. You know, I would bring

a scene in and I would say, “Well, what do you think?” And he would say,

“[POETRY] CAN REALLY SET THE

MOOD OF A SCENE, BUT IT CAN ALSO

DEEPEN CHARACTER IN A PROFOUND

WAY, BECAUSE POETRY IS SINGING;

IT’S MUSIC. I FIND MUSIC TO BE THE

MOST POWERFUL WAY TO EXPRESS

EMOTION—TO LURE YOUR AUDIENCE,

BUT ALSO TO MAKE THEM FEEL A VERY

SPECIFIC TYPE OF EMOTION. I USE

POETRY FOR THAT EFFECT.”

“Well, what do you think?” And I wouldn’t have an answer. And by the end of

that semester I had finished the entire play, and I begged him—I said, please

tell me if you think it’s crap or not. Just tell me, because I need to know if

I’m going to pursue this or not. And he said, “The fact that you’re struggling

with this means that this is the business you belong in.” And I thought that

was really funny. Then he submitted the play to a festival and it won! So I

just got the bug from that moment on. I couldn’t imagine doing anything

else, to be honest.

YOUR NEW PLAY THE HOUSE THAT WILL NOT STAND WAS PRESENTED

IN HARTFORD STAGE’S BRAND:NEW FESTIVAL IN NOVEMBER. TELL

ME A LITTLE ABOUT THAT PLAY AND THAT EXPERIENCE.

Like I mentioned before, I really like Federico García Lorca’s work, and I

recently read The House of Bernarda Alba and then saw a production of

it. When I read it, I thought it was hilarious. I couldn’t believe that it wasn’t

a comedy. Then when I saw it, the production wasn’t funny at all. It kind of

reminded me of my family—they can be very dry and their humor is very

dark, and I thought, I wonder if Lorca meant this to be a comedy. Then,

when I was doing research on the play, I discovered that critics actually

shoved it into what is called the Rural Trilogy. He actually never meant for

it to be part of the Rural Trilogy. So he actually never meant for it to be a

tragedy. He actually, I think, means for it to be very funny, and then in the

last scene where the youngest daughter kills herself there’s this dissonance

between tragedy and comedy.

I really wanted to explore that, so I did a very loose adaptation of Bernarda

Alba that takes place 100 years before Bernarda Alba in Louisiana 1836. I

really wanted to explore this system called plaçage, which basically is this

system where free women of color become the mistresses of white men, then

when the white men passed they left all their money to these free women of

color. So through this system, which existed for about 200 years, the free

women of color in Louisiana became very, very wealthy. In fact, they were

one of the most powerful classes in Louisiana during the time—but only the

women, because of course they were the mistresses of these Creole men. My

great-grandmother on my mother’s side is a product of this system/culture.

The reading at Hartford Stage went very well. I already knew the actresses

I wanted to work with because I work with them quite a bit. We had a great

time. The audience responded well to it, and I’m going to change a few

things and then do another reading of it later this year and keep moving

forward.

WHAT DO YOU LIKE OR DISLIKE IN A PLAY?

Ooh. Like is that scary word. I don’t know if you can like a play. I guess, to

use that word, I don’t like when plays are predictable, but I do like when

plays make me uncomfortable or make me think something new about the

world that I hadn’t thought about before, make me feel something different.

I’m not afraid to be offended, I’m not afraid to feel anything deeply or to be

angry. I think with great theater, you should want to talk about it afterwards.

And great theater makes you feel something and spurs dialogue—even if

you don’t want to admit it. Great theater reminds you that you are alive,

because we forget far too often.

But I also feel like sometimes audiences want a recreated experience. I

think that’s a danger of theater—people see a really great production of

Death of a Salesman, and then everything should equal that. You know, that

becomes their definition of a great play. I wish more theatergoers, or actually

theater practitioners, would really celebrate the diversity of “the play.” When

you go to a gallery, you don’t have to understand everything about the art.

It’s in a frame and you can look at it and you might say, Oh, that made me

feel that way or this, and your opinion doesn’t decrease the value of the art

because of the nature of visual art and how our society views it. You don’t

have to love it. But when people go to see plays, it seems like audiences

are more critical about the art, instead of letting the art be more abstract,

more experimental. They are highly vocal about their opinions and they are

often limited. When they feel something deeply, I think that sometimes is

the point that the art is trying to get across. It doesn’t necessarily make it

bad. Different should not equal bad. Different should inspire conversation.

So I guess what I’m saying, in a nutshell, is that I like theater that, one,

speaks into the void, that is saying something new; and then, two, creates

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.

dialogue afterwards. I’m not sure if theater can change the world but I am

quite certain it can cause a spark for change.

ANYTHING ELSE?

I’m really excited about this workshop, and I’m really grateful to the

Playwrights’ Center—it’s a rare thing when you get to do whatever you need

to do as a playwright and just have people support you. I feel like they’re

taking the workshop extremely seriously and just allowing me the space to

explore. So I’m not only excited but very, very grateful for the opportunity,

because I think it’s the rarest thing when people ask you what you need and

then try and provide that for you.

“I’M REALLY EXCITED ABOUT THIS

WORKSHOP, AND I’M REALLY GRATEFUL

TO THE PLAYWRIGHTS’ CENTER—IT’S

A RARE THING WHEN YOU GET TO DO

WHATEVER YOU NEED TO DO AS A

PLAYWRIGHT AND JUST HAVE PEOPLE

SUPPORT YOU.”

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