Here it is from the beginning.

So if I’m not mistaken you met Matt (Slaybaugh) at Humana?

Yeah. He reminded me of the guys in San Francisco who started theaters and were doing interesting work. Typing at his computer and he seemed really excited about it. So, when he asked about doing a reading of The Thugs, I said why not? And when he asked if he could produce it I said why not? I didn’t know his work but I liked him.

His heart’s in the right place and he’s an excellent director.

Is he? Well that’s good to here. (Laughs)

And you’re from Canada?

I was born in Canada but I’ve been here a long time. I went to high school here, undergrad, grad. I’ve been here for 30 years.

Wow. I didn’t realize that. Where did you go to school?

I went to Brown for grad school. I studied with Paula Vogel and Mac Wellman there.

And you spent a lot of time in San Francisco. What brought you out there?

Well, I’d been in Rhode Island for 11 years and I just wanted to have better sex. (Laughs) No. I’m just kidding ... I really loved the city and gay guys had much more autonomy and power to be themselves in San Francisco. I mean, in Rhode Island I did a lot of activism and I was tired when I left. In San Francisco I was just another white guy! (Laughs) It was a relief ... it’s what impacted me as a gay man.

And you were involved with Shotgun Players in San Francisco?

I was involved with two theaters really. Shotgun and Encore.

How did that happen?

Well, really I worked with Encore first and then they took over to Shotgun. My play Swimming With Shallows kind of went out there before me to this guy named Kent Nicholson -

Oh I know Kent! He’s great guy. [Note: Kent Nicholson is head of New Play Development at TheatreWorks in Palo Alto.]

He passed the work on to Encore. I’ve had five plays I think done at Encore now and four at Shotgun. Shotgun is a really great theater - I think this year they’re doing like Eisa Davis, a play by Marcus Gardley, Liz Duffy Adams just a lot of great work. And Encore has Peter Nachtrieb -

I saw one of his plays when I was out there.

Yeah, he’s a lot of fun.

This is quite the year for you- it’s like a banner year! (Laughs) You’ve got The Receptionist going up at Manhattan Theatre Club then Drunkern City at Playwrights Horizons?

I’m very lucky.

How do you feel?

Excited. When it comes I get all worked up. I was pretty low key during the summer. Just working on a lot of things- I was working on my first television screenplay thing -

That’s cool.

Yeah, fun, I was working on it for Scott Rudin at Miramax. And rewrites of a new play. I’m really excited about The Receptionist since it’s the first one. And Trip [Cullman, theatre director] and I worked on a new play over the summer so I just try to keep a lot of irons on the pot.

Now I thought we’d talk about The Thugs. One of the things that really struck me as a playwright was the minimalism of the language you use. Short sentences, fragments - I wondered what you’d say about your own style in regards to it?

Really I try and replicate what I hear. I’m not a very thinking speaker myself. (Laughs) I mean I’m trying hard right now to be coherent. I guess - I’m just not as interested in how it is on the page but how it comes out as sound. When you listen in the world [language] comes out in bursts, twists, it backs up on itself, it’s self referential ... it doesn’t really come out pretty unless you’re a brilliant speaker or you think before you speak.

Things change more quickly. In speech. Especially moments of drama - people have to fight for vocal space. For me full sentences, when I hear a lot of them on stage - they don’t sound real. It’s exciting to make that rhythm - "oh this person goes backwards, is self referential ..." and to show it on the page so that when an actor reads the twists and turns of the language shows up.

I mean there’s a couple of things I’m always interested in showing: one is people who don’t show up on stage much. Gay men. Older women.

I was going to ask you about that. It’s striking to me - I mean - you write a lot of non traditional female characters ...

Well, everyone is the center of their own world but you rarely see these people on stage. They’ll be a side character or something secondary. Like you remember that guy in Office Space? Have you seen that?

Yeah.

There’s the guy with the stapler and they keep moving him through the building and eventually he’s in the basement?

Absolutely.

He’s a side character - but he’s got a whole life, whole drama we don’t see. So that’s interesting to me: who don’t we normally see? That and searching for what a real sound may be. And I’m interested in the truth. My truth. Not satire ... not ... (Laughs) see how my language devolved right there? (Laughs)

I just remember Anna Deaveare Smith taught when I was at the O'Neill. And she brought an interview of Joan Rivers, she was hosting The Tonight Show, and in the transcription the language was broken. It didn’t go straight forward, didn’t look like people talking ... It felt like a map of language.

In reading The Thugs I found - at least for myself - it really hard to separate it from our current national climate.

Sure.

I mean it’s hard to separate it from a post 9/11 world.

For me it’s more the Iraq War. We spend so much time worrying about something else then seeing what’s right in front of us. We’re so afraid of Osama Bin Laden our bridges are falling down. I mean it makes sense to have some fear but we’re creating a lot of it.

That makes a lot of sense - there’s this really ominous feeling in the play that who characters are talking about outside of the play are really dangerous or foreboding. And this great quality where people seem to always be trying to catch up to the conversations around them -like when Bart first enters and he’s telling the story and everyone around is saying “Who? What was that?”

(Laughs) That’s temping. Have you ever temped?

No.

Oh, it’s strange. You go to these big buildings and you’re on whatever floor and you don’t know anyone or how anything works. You don’t know who’s around the corner. It’s really an example of what we’re all in everyday but we choose to ignore.

It’s frightening.

I guess I want it both ways - we’re scared but don’t be. (Laughs) Oh that’s bad.

I think the duality is great. And the conversations the temps have I mean we - as an audience - have as little information as them.

Yeah. I like that it pushes the audience really into the play. People at the New York performance said they really sat on the edge of their seats because there was so much information they wanted to get all of it. I liked that, instead of them just sitting back and letting the play come to them. I mean a lot of work now is ironic and it distances you.

In what way?

Well it comments on the work as it happens. It comes out of postmodernism and semiotics and it makes sense - Brecht - kind of like "look at what you’re saying. Don’t lose yourself in the story" The opposite of that is a writer who draws you in so you do lose yourself. I like the back and forth of it - moment of humor that lets you step outside, then drama drawing you back in ...

Another thing is - I mean, you mentioned Iraq - but how subtle the politics are. I think all work is political, personally.

Well, I had a great teacher at Brown - Paula- and she said you don’t need to force your politics. It’ll be on stage in who you pick to write about, who you put on stage what stories you tell. There’s only trouble when you push your politics and piss people off and are authoritarian. People have the best intentions and but then it feels like their bossing you around and that’s not a system I want to be a part of.

That’s why I’m so intrigued by the marriage of form and story. Semiotics. Like how you tell the story is as important as the story’s length. Like Far Away was 45 minutes but it’s so powerful that how short it is makes it feel new. The language you choose or who you give it to - there’s purpose in inarticulate powerless people fighting for status. It’s probably why they’re temps. No one wanted them. They have small fights and small language.

Now I know one of the reasons we got paired up for the interview is I’m a playwright as well. And online there’s always a lot of discussion about new play development, labels like emerging playwright - things like that? I mean how do you feel about labels like that? Being an emerging playwright. I mean in my mind you’ve already emerged.

(Laughs) Well, thanks. It doesn’t bother me, I actually feel like I’ve been through it a few times. I was emerging in Rhode Island and then I was emerging in San Francisco and now I’m emerging in NY. So it doesn’t really bother me. It gives value and also disregards. It just means people don’t know me yet or "he’s new to us" ... "we haven’t seen a lot of his work" ...

It’s like people will ask me if I mind being referred to as a gay playwright. And, no. I mean it doesn’t completely define me but it is part of who I am.

It influences what you write - I mean it’s like any of our backgrounds - it influences our worldview.

Absolutely. I mean "politics" comes from "polus." Your city. What’s your world? That’s what politics are ... the world you want. Is yours a world where people are scared or a world where people are good? I mean in your world homeless people might be mentally ill while in another person’s world they’re willful. It’s really about how you want to build your city. I mean that’s what we’re trying to do. Write a bigger circle. More inclusion. I think I’m interested in it as a gay man I want the circle to be big enough for us. It’s so sad. I mean with the war- we can’t really see a circle that includes Iraq. If we did, if we cared, we wouldn’t be able to only see our dead. We’d keep a count of theirs. We know exactly how many Americans have died. Iraqis we estimate like 30-70 thousand. That’s our job as artists - for me, my job - how can we expand the circle.

I think that’s a great point- great thing to end up on. Is there anything else you want to add or touch on?

(Laughs) Make it sound funnier. We’re having such a serious conversation!

(Laughs) No, I guess that’s true. I mean the play is incredibly funny yet in the world we live in it’s so easy to gloss over that.

Well, humor comes from being serious. It’s easier to make fun of someone who’s really serious.

Very true.