Interviews from NCPLab Fest | Pt. 1
As most of you are probably already aware, our first ever NCPLab Short Play Festival is fast coming up on the horizon! Subtitled “Stories Bring Us Together,” the evening will feature seven new short plays written by seven different South Florida playwrights, all of which were first shared at New City Players’ virtual NCPLab gatherings!
Over the course of the pandemic, over 200 short plays were read aloud over Zoom in our bi-weeklyish labs, and our artistic team selected some of the most memorable to highlight at Labfest. The festival will take place outdoors on the patio of Oakland Park restaurant Cyth and Co, so you can grab a bite or a cocktail before you enjoy the show.
To help get you as excited as we are about this super-cool event and give you a glimpse into what makes Lab so special to its attendees, we decided to introduce you to the playwrights via some fun interview questions!
Tyler Grimes
Tell me a little bit about yourself as a theatremaker and how you got involved with NCPLab!
When it comes to theatre making I like to consider myself a good ol’ fashioned writer/educator/actor/director/sound designer. Basically your run of the mill, grind it out and get the piece made kind of collaborator. After college I was the resident playwright and managing director of Distilled Theatre Company in New York City before becoming the managing director of the Lovewell Institute for the Creative Arts in Florida, all while teaching theatre at various high schools. I got involved with NCPLab during quarantine while looking for something to do that wasn’t just eating a sleeve of Oreos as quickly as possible. I’ve been an NCPLab Rat ever since.
What are some of your favorite playwrights and artistic influences?
I try to be inspired by anyone and everyone from Albee to Vogel to Silver to Washburn. I like my plays spooky, horny, extraterrestrial, and existential. I also like to find any and every way possible to surprise the audience and get them involved in the story. For me, my ideal audience experience is that person who got dragged to the show by their partner winds up sitting next to a college theatre professor and both of them start laughing at different jokes. If I can get them to have fun, I feel like I’ve done my job.
What inspired your play/any other thoughts or feelings you want to share about it?
Performance anxiety. Measuring up. Rising to the occasion. Lowbrow and highbrow getting to third base on prom night. Feeling gross and slimy but still hot at the same time. Guilt free self expression. Trusting your friends as a way to learn to trust yourself. Shaking things up and seeing how far you can stretch a gag before it breaks.
What does NCPLab mean to you, and how do you find that lab has affected your artistic process?
First and foremost NCPLab just helped me shut the hell up and write. As a self-deprecating theatre artist who generally doesn’t enjoy a lot of theatre out of sheer longing and desire to have been a part of it in the first place, Lab helped me dust off my fingers and get typing. The virtual format really helped me feel uninhibited, creating a low stakes way for me to hear whatever weird idea crept into my brain that week. Seeing a community of theatre makers that was also willing to take a risk and do something that so many other people had a bug up their butt about doing virtually was really cool. Theatre has the capacity to be the ultimate reflection of the conversation of the world and the conversation of the world was virtual! Folks who couldn’t get on board missed a heck of a wave. So I was glad to be apart of that.
What’s something besides theatre that you’re passionate about?
Dang. It’s hard to to really find something I’m NOT passionate about. But a short list would include but not be limited to games, movies, reading, lacrosse, tv, collectibles, trivia, Mariah Carey, fantasy football, comics, air conditioning, ambient lighting, Japanese city pop, a strong internet connection, goofs, gaffs, laughs, that moment after you stub your toe when the pain finally starts to subside, CrossFit, reaching my stand goal, and mah (future) wiiiife! That last one is from Borat. Funny movie.
Dog person or cat person?
If it’s between Garfield and Odie it’s not really a contest. But in just about any other context? I’m going dog.
Anything else you’d like to shout into the void?
Xfinity has a long back and wears a wig that isn’t fooling anyone!!
Luis Roberto Hererra
Tell me a little bit about yourself as a theatremaker and how you got involved with NCPLab!
I am a Colombian New York/South Florida based playwright in the final year of the MFA playwriting program at The New School. I am constantly trying to self-produce and get work on its feet one way or another. I got involved with NCPLab because of the pandemic at the beginning of the quarantine.
What are some of your favorite playwrights and artistic influences?
Favorite playwrights are Annie Baker, Simon Stephens, Martyna Majok and some artistic influences are creators like Issa Rae, Ramy Youssef, Phoebe Waller-Bridges, Ari Aster, Lulu Wang, Trey Edward Shults, David Lowery, and Robert Eggers - writers and directors that through very naturalistic dialogue and ideas tackle sometimes simple yet very complex situations.
What inspired your play/any other thoughts or feelings you want to share about it?
Nothing directly inspired the play, I wanted to have something for a specific lab so, I just started mindlessly writing, after a few lines what came to mind was only the idea of people having extreme reactions to a certain situation.
What does NCPLab mean to you, and how do you find that lab has affected your artistic process?
To me, NCPLab provides something that I don’t notice many theatre companies doing these days, community. Instead of keeping the audience at what feels like an arms length, NCPLab gets rid of the gap, and creates a sense of equality between people that love theatre. I wouldn’t say it has affected my artistic process, but it has definitely changed my artistic life in the people I have met and connected with, people that I couldn’t even imagine not working with anymore.
What’s something besides theatre that you’re passionate about?
I am passionate about video games and the video game industry, comic books in both the reading and writing them, as well as astrophysics - reading and learning about it as much as I can.
Dog person or cat person?
Dog person I think…
Anything else you’d like to shout into the void?
Hm… anything else for the void? I don’t know, yeah I got nothing… excited to see all these other playwrights get their work produced? Yeah, that’s it.
Ilana Jael
Tell me a little bit about yourself as a theatre-maker and how you got involved with NCPLab!
Basically, no matter how many times I try to leave the theatre, something always keeps drawing me back in. I started acting in high school but eventually came to the conclusion that I was more of a natural fit as a playwright, and got into NYU’s Dramatic Writing program with one of the first one-act plays I ever wrote. But I kind of floundered there and ended up coming back home to finish undergrad at FAU Honors College, where I created my own concentration combining Writing and Psychology and ended up writing my first attempt at a full-length play (featuring a psychologically disturbed main character, naturally) as my thesis.
As far as New City Players, I was basically kind of stalking them (read: attending a lot of their events) during the immediate pre-pandemic period after being intrigued by all of the cool community engagement stuff they were doing around their production of Falling, and that naturally extended into the virtual world once the pandemic started. Believe it or not, NCPLab is actually one of the things that pulled me back towards playwriting after I went to grad school for the seemingly-sensible nonfiction (which I’ve always felt like I’m better at), and Tim ended up inviting me to officially join NCP’s artistic ensemble in November of 2020!
What are some of your favorite playwrights and artistic influences?
I feel like I’m not nearly as theatre-literate as I should be honestly because my attention span to read all the things I’m supposed to read is kind of nonexistent, but my all-time favorite playwright is probably Tennessee Williams, hence the Glass Menagerie inspired blue rose tattoo on my shoulder!! As far as more modern playwrights, the lyricism, intensity, and social conscience of Quiara Alegría Hudes’s work also puts her close to the top of my list (and I swear I’m not just saying that because NCP is doing her Water By The Spoonful in a few months!!)
One of my formative theatre experiences was also acting in the play columbinus by PJ Paparelli and Stephen Karam, which is about the lead up to and aftermath of the Columbine massacre. My director framed it as us telling a story that “needed to be told” about issues of mental health and bullying, and the idea of making a real impact on people and telling stories that viscerally need to be told is one that stuck with me.
What inspired your play/any other thoughts or feelings you want to share about it?
I actually wrote my first draft of Fire Is Light in immediate reaction to the first riots after George Floyd was murdered—like, that very night, just the raw energy of trying to process it, I suppose. Its characters are also trying to process and respond to the riots and the incident, and I think the debate they have and conclusion they end up coming to sheds some light on the systemic issues that came to a societal breaking point after that tragedy. I was also struck by the idea of fire as a hopeful rather than ominous symbol, particularly in times that were as short on hope as the pandemic’s early days.
What does NCPLab mean to you, and how do you find that lab has affected your artistic process?
I’ve tried to articulate this before, but, basically: especially during the early days of the pandemic, when so much else was in chaos and in stasis, having a place to “go” every two weeks where I could have an artistic outlet and be surrounded by a group of accepting creative people was honestly soul-sustaining.
Having regular submission deadlines and knowing I would get the adrenaline rush of audience response when my work was read out loud was also a huge motivation for me to like, actually finish things, and I definitely wrote things I wouldn’t have written otherwise in response to specific prompts. (Or, in one case, in response to an offhand comment Tim made on Instagram Live about the lack of media representation of bad cops…)
Not only the artistic work shared in lab but the entity and “vibe” of NCPlab itself also played a huge role in inspiring me to write the first full length play that I actually feel not-terrible about, which is tentatively scheduled for a full production in West Palm Beach later this year! Plus, another piece that I started as a lab experiment and that NCP actually chose part of to be featured in a Zoom reading, Easter Miracle, ended up inspiring a preliminary full draft that I’m invested enough in that hopefully I’ll get around to doing a full revision of it eventually… (maybe if someone ties me to a chair until I do??)
What’s something besides theatre that you’re passionate about?
I write non-fiction as well as plays, though theatre is honestly so much at the center of my identity that my strongest personal pieces usually end up at least mentioning it… I’m also passionate about social justice and making ours a juster and kinder world in every way possible, which I feel like informs a lot of my playwriting as well, to circle back to the “stories that need to be told” thing.
Dog person or cat person?
I like to say that I never want to find myself committed to anything needier than a cat.
Anything else you’d like to shout into the void?
Can’t wait to see you at Labfest, and I really hope you guys are all vaccinated.
For tickets to the NCP Lab Short Play Festival, click here. All seven plays will be performed live at the outdoor patio of Cyth & Co. coffee and cocktail cafe from 7:30–9pm on Feb 17, 18, 19 and 20. Cyth & Co. is located at 3446 NE 12th Ave., Oakland Park 33334. For directions and menu go to cythco.com.