Meet our second playwright, Garry Williams whose play RAIN will be featured in our upcoming "Teasers and Pleasers" night of new works.
1) What made you decide to apply for this festival? Do you have any personal connections to Autism that you would feel comfortable sharing?
A playwright friend, Rich Orloff, told me about the festival and it touched me that a company would devote an evening of plays to autism. I have a first cousin with heart damage and profound mental retardation, and I always admired my aunt and uncle and cousins for making sure that she was loved and included and always knew that she belonged.
2)The character with Autism in your play, Tyler, is nonverbal throughout the play. That’s a really challenging (and yet utterly rewarding) character trait for an actor just walking into the role. What made you decide to go this route?
Much of what goes into my plays is subconscious, I think. Maybe even accidental. I didn't know as I was writing RAIN that Tyler was going to end up being a Christ symbol - an all-loving but completely uncommunicative being. The decision to make him nonverbal wasn't meant to set that up. I was simply moved by the idea of Tyler being an unspeaking - but unconditionally loving - presence in the family and on the stage. The fact that Staff eventually uses him as a Christ symbol was a very happy surprise to me.
3) In your play, there is an amazing juxtaposition set up between Tyler, who has had a disorder for all of his life, and Staff, who recently became handicapped. Did you do a lot of research going into the play on the ways in which people cope with disabilities or the backgrounds of those disabilities at all?
I didn't do a lot of specific research into loss or disability before sitting down to write. This play really came more out of emotion than intellect. My mantra is always "How would that feel?" How would it feel for a man of the outdoors to lose his legs, his independence? For that matter, how would it feel to fall off a barn roof? After the opening night of the first production of the show (at the Alliance Rep in Burbank), a man came up to me and asked, "How far did you fall?" He had fallen forty feet and said that I described the experience and thought processes so clearly that he assumed I had fallen too.
4) Many times in Off Off Broadway theater I feel like we see plays about New Yorkers or situations we face in a big city. However, your characters live in a far away land known as the Midwest. How do you feel the location of your plays effect your characters and their sensibilities?
There is something stark about the part of Indiana that we live in. It looks stark and it feels stark. The summers are too hot, the winters are too cold, and there's very little of what most people would think of as beauty. It's flat and featureless and pretty much wall-to-wall corn and soybeans with a few trees and houses in between. But you learn to see the beauty if you live here. You learn to bundle up when it's cold as hell and run a hose over your head when it's hot as hell. And you go on. Those are the things that forged people like Staff and Mary - living on a part of the planet that humans couldn't live on if they hadn't tamed fire and learned to use tools. It's a no-nonsense environment and it produces no-nonsense people.
Another thing that makes Staff and Mary who they are, I think, is the fact that they farm. Farming is an act of both faith and stubbornness. They plant fields that are too big to water, so if it doesn't rain, they don't have a crop. But they'll do it again the next year, and the next. We live on a farm (though we don't farm ourselves), so I know the feeling of looking out across hundreds of acres of corn that is stunted and withered by heat and drought. And there's nothing you can do. Nothing at all. That's Staff and Mary's life. They chose it and they'll survive it. They're tough people.
5) What was the moment that made you decide to be a playwright?
My wife actually says that writing RAIN was pivotal for me. She read it, looked at me and said, "Well, you're a playwright." As far as a moment that made me want to BE a playwright, I can't really put my finger on one. I remember being young - 10 or 12 maybe - and watching a movie that touched me. I don't even remember what the movie was, but I thought it was a thing of beauty. And I remember thinking that I wanted to be in on creating something of beauty someday.
6) What is your favorite piece you have written? Or Favorite experience with a piece?
RAIN may very well by my favorite piece, along with an unproduced TV pilot called "Tijuana, Ohio." And I would have to say that my favorite moment was the very first production of RAIN at the Alliance. It was beautifully directed, perfectly cast, and brilliantly acted. They found every beat of the play. It was remarkable.
7) If you were trapped on a deserted island with only one play to read, what would it be? Feel free to cast it as well (we can kidnap some actors onto this island)!
Wow. I'm not sure I could settle on one. Maybe DEATH OF A SALESMAN. Or WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? Or STREAMERS. And the original Broadway cast of any of those shows would be welcome on my island!
8) What's up next for you after this? Any news to share with the bloggy world?
I have a script with the BBC called LORILEI. It's the true story of the mother of a murdered little boy who didn't want her son's killer executed. In the age of comic book movies, it's not an easy film to get made. And I'm hoping that one of the cable channels will take a chance on "Tijuana, Ohio," a series about a small town facing big city problems. It's about flyover country and what's happening here.
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