RAT Re: Criticism and Press

[nick <nick@ratconference.com>]

SEVEN QUESTIONS FROM SEVEN DRAMATURGS

The press always partially invents and creates the story, especially the
Tabloids.  And it's also apparent that the Celebrity surrenders part of the
"story of who they are" to this mechanism.  None of the characters in Dirty
Little Secrets seem to possess their own lives.  The Paparazzi lurk in
bushes everywhere waiting to ambush and usurp their story.

Jeffrey Jones is a celebrity in Seattle this week.  Both major papers are
doing feature articles on him.  Even though being a celebrity in theatre is
almost an oxymoron, there are some obvious shared issues (image,
reputation, audience, etc.) on which everyone working in public art forms
deliberates.  Sometimes in art this is called a career.  

You have been writing plays for some time.  I first saw one your plays in
Chicago in 1979.  The young Remains Theatre was then producing in a very
small triangular space, but it appeared to me to be an almost perfect venue
and production for 66 Scenes of Halloween.  Many in that Remains ensemble
left theater to the celebrity of being television and film actors. For the
most we all toil in relative obscurity. Many of us in RAT sense a chasm
between one's career in theater and one's life in theater.  

QUESTION:  So what's your story?  What are all those Dirty Little Secrets
on why you are a playwright and what do you want to be when you grow up?