Redtwist's New Play Incubator
Our goal is to build a new play incubator at Redtwist Theatre that provides ongoing play readings and development for aspiring Chicago Playwrights. The centerpiece of this initiative is the Twisted Play Festival, hosted annually at Redtwist Theatre. The festival will feature ten plays at various stages of development. Redtwist will support festival playwrights throughout the year with additional readings and workshops. Keep reading to learn about each new work and the creatives around it.
Staged Readings
Written by Toby Inoue
Directed by LaKecia Harris
WINNIE- Shenise Danyel
TY/ GERRY- James Lewis
To find their way back to each other, two mixed-race half-sisters are forced to grapple with the complicated ways in which their mother's racism broke them apart. Winnie, half African-American, is a famous but cancelled celebrity stand-up comedian, and Tomi, half Asian-American, is an elementary school art teacher who stayed in their hometown. Tomi calls Winnie home when their mother becomes seriously ill, and the sisters sort their mother's house as they accommodate her last wishes, including a comeback show for Winnie and a hospital wedding for Tomi.
Written by Caroline Kidwell
Directed by Eileen Dixon
HANNAH-Chelsea Rolfes
WANDA- Shenise Danyel
ROGER- Jack Seijo
JIMMY- Jabari Khaliq
Guess what? The world ended. And Hannah, a lifestyle vlogger, has been living alone in a bunker for five years. She’s an influencer with no one to influence until Wanda, a survivor, knocks on her door.
Written by Zack Peercy
Directed by Jessica Love
FIONA- Laura Fudacz
CHRIS/CHARLES- Irwin Daye
BOBBY/DOUBLE STRIKE- Jamaque Newberry
ASHLEY/N G/THE CRYING GIRL- Chelsea Rolfes
DREW/EWING- Chris Meister
CROWD- Paige Mesina
FIONA is the performance of a lifetime. What starts as an examination of 25 letters all addressed to an unknown "Fiona" rapidly evolves, expands, contracts, and explodes into an exploration of belief, reality, presentation, and legacy.
Stand Readings
Written by Ruben Carrazana
Directed by Joshua Servantez
EMMY- Jabari Khaliq
LORI- Monique Marshaun
CRAIG- Irwin Daye
When Lorry says she's ready to move on, Emmy won't take no for an answer. He writes her love letters every day. He shows up at her house unannounced in the middle of the night. Stalks her on social media. The play is about a break up. A really bad break up. Like the worst. And about time. And how time heals. And how, sometimes, it doesn't. An anti-romantic comedy about moving on. And not moving on. A play about pain and suicide and pizza rolls and the United States Postal Service. A love letter to getting your heart crushed, because sometimes, you deserve it.
Written by Brandon Wright
Directed by Rashaad A. Bond
JARED- Chris Meister
ANGELA- Laura Fudacz
MARY- Leah Huskey
MILO-Riley Lucas
CAROL- Sandy Spatz
In quiet suburbia, a group of five come across the body of a black boy hanging from a tree. They take it upon themselves to figure out whodunit, but as they explore the nature of this violent hate crime true secrets start to become uncovered within themselves.
Written by Melanie Coffey
Directed by Dusty Brown
JODIE- Monique Marshaun
EMMA- Kalliope Bessler
NEIGHBOR- Marianne Buckley
CAM- Hannah McCauley
HIKER- Riley Lucas
Jodie and Emma are the lucky winners of the Project's Soil competition, where they receive a truckload of soil and are to garden it with prairie grasses, native flowers and the vegetables of their choosing. But their well is drying up, the Neighbor keeps sneaking over and eating the soil and the couple is becoming less and less the good team they thought they were. Putting roots down in desertified land is never easy.
Empower
Growth
Written by Jordan Gleaves
Directed by Aja Singletary
RICHARD- Jamaque Newberry
STAN- Jabari Khaliq
SHAUN- Irwin Daye
HAROLD- James Lewis
Stan is homeless in the West End neighborhood of Atlanta and estranged from his brother. To make matters worse, Stan is about to lose his beloved “Mother,” Friendship Baptist Church, which is to be demolished and replaced by a new football stadium for the Atlanta Falcons. In the midst of the neighborhood’s rapid gentrification, Richard returns into Stan’s life with hopes of helping his younger brother get a leg up out of homelessness and avoid displacement. First however they must work to amend their relationship and work past moral differences. Is reconciliation possible and how much will it matter when the community around the brothers is changing with or without their participation?
Written by Ben F Locke
Directed by Devin Christor
DARNELL- Jabari Khaliq
RASHAD- Christian Scott
TEY- Jack Seijo
JULIA- Leah Huskey
Stage Directions- Riley Lucas
Darnell is an up and coming app designer. His popularity attracts a lot of fame and attention. It all seems great until he finds out that he's being stalked. Can Darnell solve the mystery before it's too late? Following explores what exactly it means to be an ally. Do we do what we do because it's the right thing to do or do we all have our own selfish motives that dictate what we deem as what's right and wrong?
Written by MT Cozzola
Directed by Hannah Blau
JAMIE- Liv Caldwell
FERN- Sandy Spatz
MANDY- Hannah McCauley
LYNETTE- Laura Fudacz
KENNA- Paige Mesina
LLYANA- Leah Huskey
ETHAN- Chris Meister
When a brilliant young poet disappears from an artist’s colony, her fellow writers weave alibis to shield their secrets from an unseen inspector who digs relentlessly for the truth.
In a secluded mountain retreat, six ambitious women come together to write their masterpieces but switch to alibis when brilliant young Kenna meets a mysterious demise. As they struggle to shield their secrets, a relentless inspector digs for the truth. Everyone is lying—Kenna’s lover Mandy, rival Fern, would-be bestie Lynette…even the kindly cabbie who saw her last. In a race against time to unmask the killer, each must confront their deepest desires and wrestle with the bonds of love, art, and community.
Development Stages
Headliner
The Totality of All Things
by Erik Gernand
This fully realized play is the culmination of the Twisted PlayFest new work incubator. The Headliner is fully produced: led by a talented director; performed by a cast of professionals; and realized by a team of incredible designers. Plays at this stage are World Premieres and Redtwist strives to connect the playwright with theaters around the country and see their script produced nationally.
Staged Readings
Keep It Light by Toby Inoue
ManCave by Caroline Kidwell
Fiona by Zack Peercy
These plays are in their final stages of development before receiving a full production. Staged readings allow for a deeper collaboration between playwrights and directors, exploring how the play evolves as the actors add movement. This level also includes designers, to consider how costumes, props, and visual elements can enhance the script. Each year, one Staged Reading will be selected for a year of development and become the next PlayFest's Headliner.
Stand Readings
You Sit Down and You Cry
by Ruben Carrazana
Strange Fruit by Brandon Wright
Murder in Residence
by MT Cozzola
Following by Ben F. Locke
Deserted by Melanie Coffey
Short Changed
by Jordan Gleaves
These represent the newest plays in the Twisted PlayFest, just beginning their development journey. Stand Readings pair playwrights with professional actors and directors to explore pacing and language of the script. Each year, three Stand Readings will be selected for a year of development and become the next PlayFest's Staged Readings.
Our Values:
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This Project values Chicago Voices.
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This Project values diversity and representation, including diversity of race, gender, sexuality, age, and ability. We intend to express this value at every level, from producers and readers, to playwrights and directors, as well as the performers on our stage.
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This Project values playwrights as growing artists and commits to nurturing that growth through collaboration and feedback.
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This Project values stories for NOW. The ideal play should tell us about the world we live in, speak to how we should live in it, and do so in an entertaining and engaging way.
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This Project values Collaboration — the collective expression of the orchestra, over the singular effort of the soloist.
Interviews with the Playwrights
Conducted by Dramaturg, Camille Pugliese
Fiona
by Zack Peercy
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My Zach Piercy. I'm a disabled playwright, living in Chicago. I'm an ensemble member with Factory Theater. I'm their literary manager. I have a cat named Laszlo, and I live in Rogers Park with my partner, whom I love.
What inspired this play? How did it come to be?
It's a very non traditional, non linear play.
Yeah, tell me about that!
I'll say what I can- I don't want to impart too much meaning as the playwright onto the play, you know what I mean?
That's very fair.
To answer your question, maybe in a non-traditional way, it came to me in a dream. It came to me in a dream at a time when I wanted to quit theater. That's what I'll say about it.
Interesting. Is this its first workshop?
Kind of. I'll tell you the story.
I have a friend named Becca Holloway who is the casting director at Red Theater. She was like, Hey, I'm doing this workshop series. Do you want a workshop slot? In June or July of 2023, and I said, “yeah, sure,” I had not written a script, Ibut can have something thrown together by then. I had a few months, and I started working on a play.
I didn't really like the play, and then I had a dream. I scrapped the 30 pages of the play that I had. The only thing I left was the character names because it had already been cast. I wrote act one of Fiona instead.
I've had the first act read in front of people but now there are five acts. It goes in directions that I don't think people expected it to go in, but I've always known where it was going to end.
Is there anything new about the play or yourself or just theater in general that you've learned through this process?
What I've learned about this script through this process with Redtwist is how open to interpretation theater can be.
Was that, was any of that surprising?
No. Theater is a community activity and everyone is going to bring their voice to a project and that's the magic of it.
What do you see for the future of this play?
I think, you know, like with anything, the ultimate goal is a production. But the next step for this play in particular is being able to work with a group of actors consistently over time without them being tasked with four shows at once having to learn four scripts in a very short amount of time.
Is there anything else you'd like anyone, audiences, the world at large to know?
There's no wrong way to view this play.
And if they think it's about something, they're probably correct.
Keep It Light
by Toby Inoue
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What inspired you to write this play? How did it come to be?
I grew up experiencing and witnessing racism so it's something I'm always having thoughts about, but these thoughts became more persistent with the murder of George Floyd and the attacks of elderly Asian women during the pandemic. I wanted to write a play that addresses the insidious way racism infiltrates even the closest of relationships and how bound up it can be with loving intentions. In a family like the one in my play, racism can be difficult to even recognize as it becomes confused with favoritism or biological bonds. In my play, Winnie and Tomi come to realize that an important first step to healing is simply acknowledgement.
Is this Keep it Light's first workshop?
I've had full and partial readings of Keep It Light, but this has been its first workshop.
Is there anything new you learned about the play since starting this process? Was it surprising?
As I write a play, I hear it in my head so I think the biggest surprise is how clearly the story still comes across despite how different the workshopped version is from my own vision of it.
It was scary to take a story from my heart and trust others to convey it, but ultimately it was amazing to see the expertise and passion brought to the project by my talented cast and my wonderful director LaKecia Harris, as well as our stage manager Marisa Langston, who went above and beyond.
Have you made any changes?
Yes, I've been revising throughout as this process has helped me identify where the story was clear, where it could be more clear, and how the rhythm and flow could be improved.
What is your dream for the future of the play?
Most importantly, I think we need to continue talking about and grappling with racism in this country. I wrote this play to be a part of that conversation, and I will continue trying to find audiences for it.
Is there anything else you want myself or audiences to know?
I'm so grateful to Redtwist Theatre for putting on this new play development festival, which is critical for new playwrights like myself. My eternal thanks to Eileen Dixon and Dusty Brown for allowing me to be a part of it. This process has unlocked a new level of playwriting for me, and I'm excited for what comes next. Finally, thank you, Audience. We wouldn't be here without you.
Man Cave
by Caroline Kidwell
What inspired you to write this play? How did it come to be?
It started as a screenplay-- I was specifically trying to write something easy to film that took place in one location, so a bunker seemed like an obvious choice. I love end of the world stuff and have been wondering what role art plays in a world on fire. I wanted Hannah to have something she was working on that gave her a sense of purpose. Originally it was recording audiobooks of the Animorphs series. But then I became oddly fascinated by lifestyle influencers. The more boring the better. Like, why do they think people care what they eat in a day? Why do I care? Clearly I must care because I can't stop watching it. There's something meditative about it. Also, is it art? I think there's a certain wisdom that comes with living your life simply, and I don't think Hannah should be written off because she's privileged enough to focus on it. Her survival just looks way different than the other characters'.
Is this Man Cave's first workshop?
Yes!
Is there anything new you learned about the play since starting this process? Was it surprising?
I mean, so much but not a lot that I can articulate right now. Mostly that the relationship between Wanda and Hannah is infinitely more interesting with bodies in space than it is on paper or just read out loud, which isn't surprising at all.
Have you made any changes?
Little things, mostly fine tuning.
What is your dream for the future of the play?
A full production at some point. Maybe I'll revisit the movie idea.
You Sit Down and You Cry
by Ruben Carrazana
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What inspired this play and how did it come to be?
It was originally commissioned by a theater company in Dallas called Kitchen Dog Theater. They kind of gave me free reign to write about whatever I wanted. Around that time I had stumbled across three letters written by Stephen Adly Guirgus, who's my favorite playwright.
These were three letters that he had been commissioned to write by an online magazine that no longer exists. These three letters, which are pretty difficult to find now, were three fictional letters from a fictional guy writing love letters to an ex-girlfriend from many years ago. She's not writing back to him, and he keeps sending her letters… and she's not writing back.
I remember reading these letters and finding them very funny, but also moving and touching. I started wondering about the context of these letters. Here's a guy who is writing these letters to someone who seemingly wants to have nothing to do with him, but he keeps writing and sending these things.
I started wondering, why is it that I found this charming? What is it about this that I find moving and emotional? I started wanting to explore that: how there are some things in movies and TV shows and plays– stories about unrequited love that we romanticize, that we build up. We romanticize the idea of grand gestures, when in the real world, if a guy were to send love letters every single day for a year to someone who said she wanted to have nothing to do with him, we would say that guy's crazy. There's something wrong with that guy. That guy needs to be locked up.
I really started exploring and became really interested in exploring some of the tropes that we've become used to when it comes to romantic comedies, and trying to examine them through a real world lens and ask, okay, why do we cheer this on and celebrate this in the stories that we tell, when it is a symptom of really problematic and toxic behavior?
You mentioned that this is not your 1st workshop. Can you talk a little bit about the process between your first commission and where it is now?
When this play was commissioned originally, it was a 6 month long commission during COVID. I had 6 months to write a first draft, and I worked with the artistic director of the theater company and dramaturg that they assigned to me.
That was really helpful to get something down on paper. Six months is like a good amount of time, but I'm a very slow writer. One of the things it did for me was it kind of forced me to write and that culminated in a reading that was on zoom.
I learned a lot. The way this draft that exists now is very different. There's a whole character that no longer exists in this draft. I think that previous draft used to really be about how friendships guide us through the process of breakups, right? And so we have these scenes between Emmy and Craig, and then we also have these scenes between Lori and Maya.
And so the play would undulate between these two scenes where we get to see the dude's perspectives and the girl's perspective. After the first reading, which was a couple of years ago now, 've kept tinkering away at the play and realized that I was much more interested in something that was more intimate and more personal.
And so instead of four characters, there's now three. The dramaturg described the play as an anti-romantic comedy, and I loved that term. That's the thing that I really started to kind of lean into with this draft. I started more specifically looking at romantic comedies and some of the tropes in them and trying to see how this play might be able to more intentionally subvert some of those tropes.
Is there anything you've learned from this new draft now hearing it? Has anything that's been surprising?
One of the things that I'm interested in with the play is really challenging our tolerance thresholds for problematic male behavior.
There are some people who I think could read, see, hear this play, and immediately write Emmy off from the very beginning when they realized that this is a guy who's been writing a love letter to his ex girlfriend every day for a year, despite her saying that she wants to have nothing to do with him.Then there are some people who right up through the very end of the play will continue to say, ‘Oh, yeah, he's hurting, you know, he's in pain. Yeah, he's a little problematic, but he's got a heart of gold. Come on, Lori, give him a chance.’ I'm really interested in that space that could exist between audiences' experiences of it.
It was surprising to hear during the reading hearing, the director and the actors talk about their initial experiences of the play, and hearing them talk about that. They see the pain and they see the charm and love in this.
What is your dream for the future of this play?
I know that at the very least there's one more draft needed.
There's one scene that I've never quite been able to crack. I'm currently working on rewriting that scene. The play kind of plays with time and it's told in not chronological order. The earliest scene, the scene that takes place before the breakup, the only scene that takes place before the breakup– I don't know that I've quite figured out. I think it's a pretty important scene.
Then it's the ending. I'm terrible at endings, and that's because I don't outline my stuff. I just start writing and I see where it takes me.
That means usually, in my opinion, I love the characters, I love their voices, I love spending time with them, but there's no end. I need to figure out the end. I don't know that that play totally lands there right now. That's the thing that I'm hoping to find out a little bit more about through this process.
Deserted
by Melanie Coffey
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What inspired this play and how did it come to be?
A couple years ago, I took a tour out in California of a biodynamic vineyard. It was beautiful– its just including animals and the earth in farming seems so obvious, but it's not. Most farms are not doing it.
It's not expensive to do biodynamic agriculture but it takes years to do it. But Walking around this vineyard, I learned things like oh, there is a rodent issue? We don't kill the rodents, we get owls, and they hunt the rodents. It’s that kind of thing that started it. I definitely was like, I want to write a dirt play.I want to write a play about dirt. I want to write about the beauty of rich soil. And I want to talk about the soil structure. So that's how I started,which sounds weird and is.
When I quit my job, I had two weeks before my next job started this past January. I had a couple of days to write a play. So I wrote this. I wanted a new play for Redtwist. I didn't know what to submit. I didn't like any of my old work, so I just thought I'll write them a new one. Deserted came about.
I think what's fun about desertification is the fact that it is horrible, but it also goes so well with this lack of roots I feel in the millennial generation. It's hard to settle down because nothing about this country allows us to.
It just went hand in hand so quickly. I thought if we are trying to settle down and own a home and have kids and do the thing. What if we literally, what if the ground won't even take us? What if we can't even put roots into the land? Like, it's too broken for us. That kind of started the thought process with the two women in the play.
Is this Deserted’s first workshop?
Kind of. It was first part of Artmesia Theatre’s We Women Festival last month, but this is its first workshop. It’s the first time it’s seen a proper development process. That's been nice as well. It’s fun to play in the sandbox of this world. I'm always rewriting it. Always.
Is there anything new that you've learned about just yourself or the play since you started the workshop?
I did. One of my friends was surprised when I was already done. When I was writing, the first draft at least, I wrote so much. I normally do not write at night because once it's dark, I don't do work. Well, I try not to do work. The few days that it took for me to write this play, I was like, oh, I'm going to work at night because, the faster I write, the faster it's done.
It existed so clearly. This is going to sound really strange but recently, I wrote a different play and it took me a really really long time to write it. I was really like pulling at the script to happen and forcing it. Then I was confused why I didn’t like it.
There's something about when you know the script, you like the story, you enjoy the characters, even if they're not nice, and you enjoy what's happening. I think learning to trust my instincts when it comes to storytelling is what I've learned from this play.
Just because I can write a play, but that doesn't mean I like it. I love this. I like this world. I've learned that with this one. You can wait for the script to be good before you start writing it and actually liking the script.
Has there been anything surprising coming up?
Yeah, actually. What I love about development in general is getting to share our histories or our stories about the topic. And so I think what's really not fun, but what's very interesting about this script is what it brings up.
We've been able to bring up a lot of things. I think also living in the Midwest brings up a lot of different information. I'm not from Chicago, so it is also interesting to talk about the environment here. The play is not set in the midwest, it could be, but technically it's set in Utah, though it doesn't say it anywhere.
Having us all be able to share stories about what we know and can talk about the environment. It's not happy, but it's not unhappy. I'm always interested in a room where we can talk about the climate without having to put an asterisk on it where we anticipate it will be sad even if a lot of it is.
That's been very interesting. One of the things I truly enjoy about the room and being able to talk about the script, is that it brings up a lot about politics as well as food deserts, especially in Illinois. We’ve been able to have incredible conversations.
What is your dream for the future of this play?
I want it to be produced someday,
I want that space to feel the stressfulness of it. I want to have an audience be able to talk about this as well.
The strange thing is that biodynamic structure for agriculture works. It really does work.
If done right. It can save the dirt. It can save the soil, and I think that's hopeful. I don't imagine that this play is hopeful, but I do think having that information in this script is maybe something we get to talk about more.
If I saw a play like this, I would want to go and buy seeds. You know what I mean? I wouldn't take tomatoes for granted. I would like that idea of having an audience also think about it more and not slap their wrists, but just think about it more.
Murder in Residence
by MT Cozzola
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What inspired this play and how did it come to be?
I love artists and I love mysteries. When I spent a month at a writer's retreat in a very remote Scottish castle, I couldn't help but just imagine those things coming together for some theater magic. That's where the idea came from initially.
Is this Murder in Residence’s first reading?
It had a workshop at Chicago Dramatists last year. Then it had a reading earlier this year at a theater in New Hampshire which I wasn't able to attend.
Is there anything that you’ve learned during Twisted Playfest? Are there any surprises?
As I've developed the play, there are questions that have come up. I started out with more of a goal of entertainment. The questions around moral inquiry came a little later. Although that's kind of what I think good mysteries do, you know, they lure us in with fun characters and then they reveal and explore truths or explore questions about the cost of human desire and getting to be with the characters who are all artists.
They're all writers. Getting to spend more time with them and see the interpersonal dynamics when they're being embodied by actors. I am witnessing more of their human sides and their vulnerabilities.
The questions that came up later that I've gotten to explore a lot more in this draft, are questions about the connections between creativity and community.
How does that drive for individual expression, which we all have as artists, impact others? How are we impacted by that drive? How is expressed in the people around us, particularly in a close tight community, within a one location, like a castle?
That's what's grown and what's come up for me the most in this very abbreviated process that we're in.
What’s your dream for the future of this play?
My dream would be a production that is able to happen in a way that really feels immersive and intimate for an audience and that enables the actors to really explore their writing minds and acting minds.
Hannah did something with us that was really fun at our first rehearsal. There's lots of writing retreat tropes and mystery tropes in the play. They're always doing writing prompts.
Hannah gave all the actors a writing prompt. It kind of came out of nowhere and people just went with it. It was great. We all sat down, did a writing prompt, and it was so cool. Some people then shared what they had come up with and it was just so great as the writer to see that and to then want to build more of it into the play.
It actually gave me an idea for something that happens at the end of the play that's really silly. A lot of this is really silly. I'm making it sound serious, but it's very silly. I was able to use that and that hadn't occurred to me– to think of these actors as writers. That's my dream for it is some kind of very atmospheric production that really makes the audience feel like they're part of the retreat too. We all have that side of ourselves and some of us are more willing to put it out there than others. But I think we all have it.
Is there anything you'd like to share with the audience or want us to know going into the play or leaving the play?
I would love people to come away feeling more emboldened to express themselves as artists. We're all in community even when we're creating alone, and that has benefits and it also has risks. I don't think we should underestimate either.
Following
by Ben F Locke
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What inspired Following and how did it come to be?
This play actually started as a 10 minute play. It was part of a collection of short plays called Scary Stories to Tell Around the Campfire. It was a play about these kids who each take turns telling a scary story– each story was a 10 minute play written by a different playwright.
Following was the first scene of the play, it was similar to a prologue. There was only one line in the whole 10 minute play, and I was very fascinated by that. I wanted to expand it. Originally it was a woman being stalked by this man as she was asleep.
I decided to make it a guy and make it queer and delve deeper into the backstory of this stalker. I wrote it so many years ago, so what it meant to me back then is very different from looking at it now.
What did the process look like when you began expanding that original 10 minute piece?
There was a lot going on when I was writing it, so I kind of wanted to talk about this idea that content and who the content comes from matters. It was a time when there was a lot of artistic changeover happening in theater spaces and a whole bunch of people were like,
“Oh, I want to do the work”
It always kind of boggled my mind that we're asking the people who created the problem and the people, who didn't see the problem, to fix the problem. You know what I'm saying? We're still letting the same artistic directors and a lot of problematic people be in charge to fix and do the work.
When we look at messaging– I think my eyes opened up when I realized that just because there's like black actors on stage, doesn't mean there's black people involved, or even that is like Black content for us. I got invested in not just seeing the cast, but looking at the creative team, looking at the playwright, looking at the director. I realized that a lot of things that you think are for us actually aren't, and actually weren't created by us.
I was very obsessed with this idea of this guy who is Black, and even though this isn't mine, if it comes from me, it'll be better and do better. It’s a play that blurs right and wrong. I feel like everyone in this play has reasons for why they're doing what they're doing. No one is kind of innocent. Everyone's kind of guilty in their own ways.
I also was getting very frustrated with all these white men's stories. When they're a bad person, but let's try to understand why they're bad. I thought, where's those kinds of stories for black people or for queer people or for women?
I really want to create more plays and more stories where it shows we're not the best people, but I want people to still understand us and still want to have sympathy for us. They still are rooting and supporting our journey.
Is there anything you’ve learned since you started this process? Was it surprising?
I was kind of surprised how funny the script is. I wrote it a while ago so I wasn't sure if all the jokes would still hold up but a lot of them do.
I learned that I'm not precious about my work though. I learned a lot about what I needed to cut or edit, even if it was jokes/lines I really liked. I also learned how fast technology has gone in such a short amount of time. Even though I wrote it a few years ago, there are some things that already make the play feel slightly dated which I kind of enjoy. I also feel like revisiting this play post "DEI" movement is strangely unsettling which even though the material is a bit dated, the message seems even more resonant than when I wrote it.
What is your dream for the future of Following?
It's funny because I don't personally want to be on Broadway because I feel like, especially now it's so inaccessible. My future for this play is that it gets a premiere and then kind of goes crazy. It gets put on regionally everywhere so that there's a lot more people that have access to see it and even have access to play the roles in it.
There's black, queer characters. It has trans representation. If it's on Broadway, there's only one person who is getting that role. Only one person can do this. If it never makes it to Broadway, but just has more regional and local kind of fame. It can spread out and be done all over the place and people can see it all over. It'll be a lot more accessible and affordable, hopefully.
Short-Changed
by Jordan Gleaves
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What inspired Short-Changed and how did it come to be?
It was actually just back in 2016 when I started writing it. I was on the couch recovering from a surgery, and I was just sort of venting thinking about the gentrification I had seen happening when I was in Atlanta at the time, specifically in the Westin community. It started out just as a journal entry venting about it, and then my brain just went to, “Oh, you know what? There might be something here, but let me just write it.”
I always like to think of it as, I'm not trying to intentionally write a play. I'm just writing. It could be easy to just be a writing exercise. As I kept fleshing it out, I was like, oh, there's a story here that I'm actually very into. Let's see where this goes.
That was the inspiration behind it. What I didn’t realize was going on until after the Walmart and everything was there. I realized this is what's happening.
Is this its first workshop?
This is its second. I've had my own private readings with friends, in living rooms and whatnot. In years past, I had a summer play festival of new works with the Facility Theater back in 2021, We just had a chance to workshop as well. So this is the 2nd time I've heard it, in person really since 3 years ago.
Has there been anything new that you've learned within this process?
I'm still running into the same obstacle of the wordiness of it. At least for my ears.
I made some edits in the past year or so, but I know I can still make it more concise. I can still cut this down.
I think I had one scene where I was talking with Aja, my really good friend who's directing it.
I have a scene where there's something there, but it's just one person begging, the other person saying no. That gets tiring kinda quickly. That’s definitely the bigger things right now just in the Zoom rehearsals that's been revealed to me. It's just some old habits.
On the positive side though, it's, one of my one of the actors in it, James Lewis, he's playing a different character than he did when we worked together back in 2021. He played the older brother, and now he's playing a character who is like an older brother to that younger brother. And just even hearing this different spin on it, I thought “Okay. It's still there.” There's still that big brother energy which is good to hear.
It doesn't necessarily have to be how I had this character here within mind as being this, 50 something year old man, this elder, but that he still could be close in age like in his thirties as the older brother Rich is in my play. It could still be around the same age and still have that wisdom.
Has anything that’s come up been surprising?
Hearing the director's take on it. You know? There is a difference in Aja's take versus the director I worked with last time. Aja sent a list after reading it just asking questions about the script.There were things I didn't think about. Or other parts that didn’t feel as deep to me. It's not a very elaborate thing that I'm trying to get into.
I also enjoy constantly hearing different Black men and their take on it. There are actors this time who have some experience of living in Atlanta. So even though I wasn't there for the first rehearsal, when I came back, Aja told me how they could point to different locations and references. They knew what the slang meant, addresses, and timeframe of when this was happening. This is the time frame of when this was happening. So it's been really nice to have at least some actors in the room who know what I’m talking about.
What is your dream for the future of this play?
It’s almost there to where I'm done. Of course, the dream is, you know, getting up on somebody's stage, preferably a black theater. That way I don't have to worry about, like, how many of us are going to be in the room. I've had the experience doing black stories and there are only 2, 3 of us in the room and everyone else is white. I’m not saying it can't work, but there's gonna be some sauce that's missing from it.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with myself or the audience?
The American Deli reference in there, the specific one where the stripper who works at the cash register, came from a full memory, and I ended up writing that monologue that Stan has about her.
I forgot all about this one conversation that she and I actually shared. She just ended up being this very sweet woman, and I learned so much more about her. I want to add that personal experience and add that into the play just to give her even more humanity. She’s not just the stripper that worked at this American Deli. There's a whole being of her that I thought it would be sweet to add.
For people who have not had American Deli, I was telling Aja, as far as how it's very localized in a region. For me, it's like Harold's. You can get hot dogs, chicken, gyros, all those kinds of stuff. Just a really good spot that reminds me of Atlanta.
There are little references to songs in there because I love OutKast. I've dropped lyrics in there where it’s fun. I’ve put references about my family in there to push the story forward.