Neil LaBute on American Theater, European Theater, and His New Play at City Garage

A Couple of White Guys Sitting Around Talking

By Steven Leigh Morris

 

Playwright-screenwriter-film director Neil LaBute is best known for a play that he wrote and later adapted for film, In the Company of Men, which won awards from the Sundance Film Festival, the Independent Spirit Awards and the New York Film Critics Circle. Other plays include The Shape of Things, Reasons to be Happy, Reasons to be Pretty, Fat Pig and The Break of Noon.

The latter two plays were staged locally at Geffen Playhouse. A second, local production of The Break of Noonwas staged by Santa Monica’s City Garage in 2015. That theater is presenting the world premiere of LaBute’s If I Needed Someone, opening August 2.

 Detroit-born LaBute is the son of a hospital receptionist and a long-haul truck driver. After growing up in Spokane, Washington, he studied theater at Brigham Young University, where he joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He also studied theater at NYU, the University of Kansas and the Royal Court Theatre in London.

 LaBute spoke to Stage Raw by Zoom from Sibiu, Romania, where he’s currently directing a production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya

 

“Uncle Vanya” in Romania

 Stage Raw: Well, there are several topics, one of which is what the hell you’re doing in Romania.

 Neil Labute: This is certainly not a priority, it’s a curiosity at best. . .

Stage Raw: No, it’s really interesting. What do the Romanians see in Uncle Vanya? We’ll get to that. . .

Neil Labute: Same thing we all do: a devastating portrait of humanity. I said to somebody, this play, it’ll only matter to you if you’re alive. So, that’s pretty much it. Otherwise, you probably won’t like it if you happen to be dead. Everybody else will find a little something and say, well that’s interesting, wow, [Chekhov] was way ahead of his time.

 Stage Raw: He sure was. You know, I was weaned on that play. I don’t why, even as a teenager, it resonated so much. It’s about old people, aging, yet even as a teenager. . .

Neil Labute: Yeah, it did for me. Why do these things happen? We read a book, we read a line and it sticks with you forever. I recently read a novel, not an inconsequential novel, but certainly not high on the shelf space, and not badly written, but it has the unfortunate sense that it’s very similar to Benjamin Button, and the author didn’t realize that until after it was published, so I guess the publishers didn’t know that either, because the character ages backwards, but I sort of used it as our motto for Vanya — the opening line, “We are each the love of somebody’s life” and I was like, you’re killing me, guy, and my arm went off the table; good one, try to keep up with that. It’s a beautiful sentiment, and that’s Chekhov’s play, this roundelay of want and regret. It’s amazing.

And the unrequited stuff.

 Always the best.

 How are you staging it?

Poorly at the moment, but I imagine we’ll get better. I have another four weeks to pick up the speed. Kind of timelessly. There was just a version with Steve Carell [playing Vanya]  at Lincoln Center. I was very curious, I was getting ready to do this and I had a friend who was in it as an understudy telling me bits about it, and then I read somewhere about the writer who did the adaptation, Heidi Schreck (What The Constitution Means to Me). They set it in, they called it “the near future”, I thought, Huh! So, the one place we really don’t know anything about, that’s where you’re setting it. Everybody makes a choice.

We’re not doing that. We’re not doing 1899, we’re not doing 1999, or even now. We’re doing kind of like that timeless thing. Probably a few anachronisms. It’ll be like watching Alex Cox’s Walker, it feels very period, with the Russian names, then suddenly this helicopter flies over. So you go, oh, that’s interesting. The music will probably be very American. There will probably be this record player show up, rather than Waffles playing the guitar.

 What about the set? I’m curious about the set.

 The set’s like this beautiful little matrushka folding box. So it’s like a picture card that you’re looking into, almost like wing and groove, but in each act, the backstage wall keeps moving forward, so by the last act, there’s only like this much space left on the stage, and Vanya’s there at the end, and that last piece of wall is moving in towards him as the lights go down. Very story box. It’s a nice-looking idea, kind of story box.

Do you know the name of the set designer?

Oana Micu, she’s young and she’s done some really good stuff. She’s worked at this theater, the National Theatre here in Sibiu a few times.

There was a transcendent, era-defying Vanya out here a couple of years ago at the Pasadena Playhouse with Hugo Armstrong. It was directed by Michael Michetti. 

City Garage

Are you coming to L.A. to see your new play?

I’m sure hoping to. I’m here for another four weeks. I’m hoping that everybody in L.A. goes to see the play, so that they’re forced to do a few extra weeks, that sort of thing. I would love to get out there. It’s always great, even if you’re not in the room, it’s always great to see the first version of something. This [play] was in rehearsal to be a production at a theater upstate in New Paltz. I had some friends who had this space, so I gave them this play, just as Covid hit, and so it’s been sitting there. Since then, I’ve been looking at it going, if you’re not careful, I’m going to film you, I’m going to turn you into a movie. Then the good folks there at City Garage asked, do you have anything of interest? I gave them five or six things, a couple of adaptations, including this Uncle Vanya, and they came around to If I Needed Someone. They said, yeah, we really like this, a sweet but a little bit prickly two-hander.

Isn’t it about a couple that’s dating? Which is very unlike them, to do a play like that.

Exactly. The stuff I’ve seen there is not that. They did Betrayal recently, but they like a bigger cast, so it’s fun that they decided this was the one.

During Covid they did an interesting O’Neill, Hughie, on Zoom, also a two-hander. . .

 Always liked Hughie. . .

 And it was very unlike what they usually do, I predict your play will be like that, fairly naturalistic, which was interesting to see in Hughie. They didn’t do their usual arch French expressionism.

I’ll bet there was some red in there, though.

 Oh, always . .  

 There must be. There must be! I’m already waiting for the pictures. I’ve been making a bet with myself, how much red will there be? Will they both be in red? Or is it just her? If there was no red, I would probably fall out my chair. Then again, I happen to like red, so I’m good either way.

You said this was written during or pre-Covid?

Just before Covid. We were just going into rehearsals, and everything shut down.

 

Changing of the Guard in the American Theater (“Don’t Take No for an Answer.”)

So what’s it’s been like for you, as a playwright, since . . .

Since then?

Since 2020.

Uhm, for everybody, there was a couple of years, at least a year and a half, when everything was on Zoom, and I wouldn’t say that I’m a joiner. I try my best. If I like something, great I’m in; if I don’t, I remain skeptical, and I remain skeptical of Zoom theater. It’s good for the learned monologue where you can break the fourth wall. I can talk to you, and you can watch that, fantastic. Two actors trying to have a scene? (He grimaces and shakes his head.) Richard Nelson basically doubled down and cornered the market on Zoom plays where people are actually on Zoom talking, and I was like, Richard Nelson, good man, you’re smart, you’re smart, he figured that out. And so he wrote like three or four of them, but everybody else can’t copy that.

So here we were, like, doing Tartuffe on Zoom, and I’m like, I might just [as well] read Tartuffe on my own guys. I might check out [of Zoom]. It’s not good on the actors. It’s not really good on anybody. And I had several plays done like that. People were like, oh, yeah, we’re going to read your play, and I said great, I’m happy, and it’s cool that people are getting to work, but not my way to see theater.

So I was happy when that was over. Things kind of immediately went back to . .. . I get a lot of stuff done, wherever, Europe and all that, but for me it’s been like. . . New York, it’s been much harder since then. But I think there was also a huge changing of the guard  — like, we want new voices and I literally fit none of the categories that they’re interested in at the moment, and so whether you have a new play or not, they’re way less interested than they were five years ago, ten years ago. And those things happen. I had a really good run of that. I think there’s still lot of good mileage on my tires. And [there are] a lot of writers as well, like me.

Unfortunately, there’s always going to be not enough space for everybody. That was when I was 20, and trying to get in the door, and when I was 40, and now, whatever. . . See how I got around my age like that? See how clever I am?

Well played. Nicely done.

Thank you. Now that I’ve pointed it out, everybody’s going to look it up. I could have just left well enough alone. . .

But that’s just the changing of seasons and the passing of the guard and all that. You hope that people go, okay great, this person now gets a chance, and that person gets a chance. I hope that it doesn’t remain, like, we all get a participation ribbon. And everybody’s going to get one play, and we’ll hear it and that will be great for you. I still kind of like ‘may the best person win’ as an approach, that we want to do the best shows. That might mean that one person gets a couple more than you, and that’s okay — nothing is perfectly fair and nothing is hopefully too unfair. But there’s this much money to go around and this many theaters. . .

I’m sort of back to that place I’ve always been in my career: Wherever I was working with agents, or working in L.A. or New York, at the same time I was always going off and doing my own thing. Like we’re going do a short play or a short film, finding jobs on my own.

When I was in college, it was virtually a microcosm. You’re in college — like when I was at the University of Kansas, I was getting my Masters, and there were only so many spaces. There was the William Inge Theatre (of course, surprise, he was from Kansas), that was the black box. And then there was the Crafton-Preyer Theatre, that was the Broadway of the University of Kansas, the mainstage. . .

Okay, I know who William Inge is, but who is Crafton-Preyer that he deserves a big theater named after him?

God knows. Maybe it’s two people for all I know, a happily married couple? Somebody put up some money, no doubt to get that name on there. Couldn’t leave well enough alone. And they had their series of plays. Then there were some things that directing candidates were doing, so finding space for yourself when you’re writing plays on your own, you’re not the first person on the list. So constantly, especially there, I’m going all over campus. And I would find spaces that fit plays. I’m finding places on campus, I’m like, oh man, you know that stairwell under the Natural History Museum, have your read that Pinter play, One for the Road, where this guy’s doing those interrogations? Why won’t we do that there? And we’ll put the audience on the stairs. So I was doing environmental theater faster than I could think.

And of course, there’s always some teacher saying, ‘you can’t do theater there.’  Yeah, you can.

I’m kind of in that same place. That’s one of the things they tell students. Any time somebody says, give me some advice, it’s not like, ‘here are the keys to the kingdom,’ My big one is, ‘don’t take no for an answer.’  Somebody says no, that’s just one no. Go around them, or find something else. . . So I’m still out there looking for money, to make a movie, or finding a place to stage a play. Who cares if the audience is here in Romania. Or if it’s in L.A. Or if it’s in Canada. My job is doing theater, not doing Broadway. Broadway used to be synonymous with doing theater when Tennessee Williams was around. There was no regional theater in the same way, but now we can do it anywhere — except Zoom.

Popcorn as The Measure of Excellence

 I have two related questions, in terms of American theater now giving participation ribbons rather than merit awards. First question: Do you think there will be a push back to the current play-selection inclination — will a new balance be found? And the second question is: Given the windows of opportunity that you’ve found off the beaten path, does the first question even matter?

 I’m still a believer in the fact that the cream will rise to the top, that a good play is a good play, and will find a home; and with the sense that I have, that a home is a home. Everybody has to set their own bar of success at a certain place they’re comfortable with. If they’re only happy if their play is on Broadway, then you have a very narrow margin of success. Whereas, I’m like, man, I just like being in front of an audience with a play, where I’m happy and I’m learning stuff from them, so that’s a different beast.

Things always seem to cycle around. If [the current situation] doesn’t change, it’ll be because those plays that came out of this ‘here, let’s have new voices’ (and I’m all for new voices), those plays still have to be good, because the audience is generally not going to be in the same place as an administrator going, well it’s just right and fair [to do this play]. . . They’re more like, I’ve spent my $100, I hope you entertain me. Because they come, mostly — outside of your theater friends who want you to fail — most audiences come with an idea of, ‘I really want this to be good. I want you to do well.’ All we have to do is fulfill that. It’s not like they’re sitting there waiting for you to fail, to hit that button and out come the lions; they’ve already spent their money. To then waste their time, on top of it, an audience doesn’t like that. The plays that were selected out of a sense of [fairness], I hope those plays are good, that’s all I want to say about that. That’s where my standard will be, I’ll come and applaud if I feel you’ve used my time well.

Isn’t that a sliding scale? An audience is not a monolith.

That’s just my standard. That’s how I go to the movies. The great qualifier is the bag of popcorn. I’m at the movie, I’m enjoying my popcorn, and I’ve now gotten to the end of the popcorn, which I was really enjoying. And I’ve come to a crossroads. Have you kept me interested enough that I will stay without popcorn and watch you? Or if not, you’ve got my $20, I’m now going home, and I will watch something I know I will enjoy, or read something I know I will enjoy, or whatever it is. I know it’s weird that it’s come to this. We always have a meter. For me it’s now how many ounces of popcorn before I have to judge you. (with self-mocking pomposity) and everything is hanging in the balance waiting for my verdict, of course. It’s the way I do it.

It makes good sense. Just listening to you, well, it surprises me given the sardonic nature of your plays, but there’s an almost optimistic buoyancy to your approach. . .

I have a little bounce in my step.

Yes, you do!

I’m talking about popcorn, that’s why.  If I wasn’t, I’d be much more angry about things. No, really, I’m a relatively hopeful person about things. As a person.

The dating play: “If I Needed Someone”

But look, the mandate, from everywhere I’ve read, from the Greeks on, has been, create conflict. It doesn’t have to be a pure antagonist/protagonist situation. I don’t really want you to go into this play and like or dislike one or the other [of the characters]. I think it’s okay to like both of them and be like, gosh I kind of hope they get together. I kind of like them, and the play is about that . . .

Well let’s dig into that. What is this play about, and where did it come from?

 It’s a play that’s. . . I love two-handers, I love real time situations where you put people into a pressure cooker where, in these 90 minutes, life will change for them. And it’s two people, two young people who meet at party and are both kind of drunk and go home together, to the woman’s apartment, which she immediately doesn’t recognize as her own because that’s how drunk she is, and the first thing she says is, “I just want you to know I’m not staying. . .  Oh, wait a minute, this is my place, hold on a second.” And she doesn’t remember when they first kissed. She doesn’t remember buying more beer. And she and he find themselves in this perilous situation, this could be the making of headlines, or this could be the beginning of a beautiful relationship. So that’s where I think a lot of people find themselves in this minefield of dating.

Headlines because of. . . the potential for abuse?

 Yeah, a he-said, she-said situation. Any misspoken word or deed, or misread moment, especially when you’ve added alcohol to the situation and all that stuff. And she sort of blames him for all of it, “What do you mean we kissed at the party?” He’s like, “You came to me!” It’s one of those things. She has no memory and that makes her mad, that that happened, but of course that doesn’t stop her from drinking more.

And so, he’s very tentative about this situation. He really likes her, but he’s like, what can I say?  What can I not say? And so, we see that dance that we’ve seen a million times. And because I do write about relationships, you might say [about me], I’ve seen Frankie and Johnny [in the Claire de Lune], what more do you have to say about that?

Well, this is not Frankie and Johnny.

 It’s not, no. They were naked. These guys never get close to that because they’re too busy arguing with each other. . .

About what reality is. . .

Yeah. What rules come with getting naked here? Do I have to sign an affidavit? Do I have to have before and after pictures? All the stuff that we go through these days. I say we, but not me. But these characters do. I thought it made for, what can I say, a good show. A good, thoughtful, fun — hopefully it’s funny — take on what I see people, guys and women that I work with or know through friends or whatever, sons and daughters of people — they tell me it’s, like, I don’t even know if I want to date. They’re more in a place like that line from Annie Hall, “Don’t mock masturbation, it’s sex with someone I love.” And now, it’s sex with someone I trust. I know I’m not going to get into trouble if that’s how my evening ends up. The result is sort of the same: you climax and move on to reading the sports headlines. Is it worth the trouble? Is love worth the trouble?

I have a question that’s related to what could be a fireworks reaction, which it probably will be because we’re in 2024. . .

 There’s always a reaction.

And that’s, I don’t know if you remember, I wrote to you about George Takei, who was accused of sexual assault. . .

Yes. . .

And he was doing a musical, it was called Allegiance, about his parents’ experiences in a Japanese-American internment camp during World War II. And the writer of the review for Stage Raw wrote, in the review, how uncomfortable she was reviewing the show because he’d been accused of sexual assault of a younger actor. And I remember saying, well, everybody gets accused of something, sometimes just for revenge, or attention. And it’s not like he’s been charged. Nothing has been proven. It’s just an accusation by one person. But you’re already treating him like Harvey Weinstein or Jeffrey Epstein. You can’t rush to judgement on these things. Besides, what’s any of that got to do with his memories of his parents, and his right to create a musical about it? And she responded with, “I always believe the victim,” which was a phrase going around a few years ago . . .

Oh, my God, it was even on coffee mugs. And T-shirts. And I think that those words always and never, they’re just so dangerous. . .

And then the accuser finally withdrew his accusation, months later, saying — and this sounds like your play — he fessed up that he couldn’t accurately remember what happened because he was so drunk at the time. And I went back to our writer with a kind of “I told you so” email, which was probably an obnoxious thing to do, in retrospect.

On the way here . . . I know you have a thought here . . .

Yeah, yeah, go ahead. . .

On the plane here, I watched Woody Allen’s new movie [Coup de Chance]. And I haven’t read a review since 2018-2019, that stoked things in those directions, that hasn’t had some kind of disclaimer of, “I don’t know why I’m reviewing this,” or “I feel this way about him,” and then, begrudgingly, “but actually the movie is pretty good.” It’s like, they just can’t divide that thing. Being a completist, I was very happy to see the movie, and it’s not his best, maybe not in the top ten, but it’s a good one. And to have done 50 movies, that’s pretty damn impressive. I haven’t read a review that doesn’t say something about his personal life. . .

To qualify.

Yes, to qualify. I’m like, you really don’t need to. You only have so many column inches, you really need to use them as a good critic would.

 So my question is, in terms of this female character who is drunk and has no memory, it seems like, and I have not read the play, it seems to me this would be tilting the conversation, and I understand you’re doing a satire, so you need something to slap around. . .

Sure. . .

Can you, is there a place where she is vindicated, in her point of view anyway?

 I think so, sure.

Do say.

I think she, I think they both make a lot of good points. If you were ever a fan of the show Gilligan’s Island. Gilligan would be torn terribly, because Professor makes a good point, Skipper makes a good point, Mr. Howell makes a good point. And Skipper says, “We can’t all have a good point!” And Gilligan says, “That’s a good point, Skipper.” That was the Gilligan set-up. So there’s no bad guy here. It’s not: it’s you, not me. It’s, we both have things to say, and we’re both coming from our points of view, we’re both right here.

How is he fucked up?

He feels that he’s in a place where he now can’t even join the race, because of who he is as a person. As a man, he’s already standing in the defendant’s box, defending anything he says or does, and he goes through the litany of things like: “If you’re in a bar and some guy comes up to you and hits on you and you find him cute, that’s a date. If you don’t find him cute, that’s a guy who’s a pain in the ass who’s hitting on you. So it’s about how cute you find him, not the act of what he’s doing.” Those are the kinds of things they go back and forth on. And is there a right answer to that? I don’t want there necessarily to be one. Somewhere in that . . .. remember that great tag line for Oleanna years ago, “Whichever side you’re on, you’re wrong.” I was like, yeah, that’s a good one. This is not like Oleanna, but there is that thing of perspective, like so much is, everything is so subjective. But people tend to use that [notion] as a “But I’m right.” And when you’re so sure you’re right, you’re often on the edge of wrong.

It’s the certainty that’s so lethal.

Yes, unopen to the other possibilities. If you remain that way, how do you grow? How do you live? Is it worth it go through this? Is it worth it to call her again? How do we step beyond these barriers that we put up between people, because we’re so worried: What about this? What about that? What if this happens? Is it worth the risk? Nobody plunges anymore. There’s no falling in love. There’s no falling anymore. Falling just means you’ll get hurt. Parents now tell us, well mine were like, “Run off in the woods and if I see you again, it was a good day.” Parents are now, “I can’t let you out of the house. Don’t look at a peanut.” There’s no sense of adventure. To love, and life, and all those things. And this is about two people trying to live within these constraints.

Yeah, her drunkenness doesn’t really play into it. And she does have a past that she can talk about. It’s not like I’m being prickly about these things just to be prickly because it’s fashionable. I’ve gone through this kind of thing.

“Do you ever feel scared when you go to the movies, or come home from the movies, or walk to your car, or walking to the market,” she asks him. He says no. “Well,” she says, ” I have. Every day. That’s what I live with every moment. We’re different people. I wonder when I leave this apartment, will I ever make it back here.” And of course, he doesn’t feel anything like that. And he tells her, “But I would never do anything to hurt you. . .”

“Don’t.” she says.  “That promise doesn’t really . . . I don’t really feel great about it. Taking nothing away from you, that’s just the way of the world. It’s the way things have landed. I think you’re cool. I like you, but I don’t want to wake up and have you here. So even if I say ‘please stay,’ please don’t fucking stay. I don’t want to see you in the morning. That may happen another time but not now. And I won’t ever trust you again if I find you here in the morning. I’ll be happy if we talk all night and you hold my hand until I fall asleep, but do not be here in the morning.”

And that’s the kind of play it is. It’s trying to be real about how tough love can be. Not even love. They’re not in love. They’re barely in like. Just interacting with somebody. The dance is a tough one, learning the steps.

No wonder the kids are on their phones all the time.

Much safer to be watching Game of Thrones or whatever.

 Thank you, Neil.

Oh, my pleasure. So how are things in Los Angeles? You asked me about things here [in Romania], but what about L.A.? How is theater in Los Angeles doing?

Los Angeles, 2024

Well, in 2020, California Assembly Bill 5 doubled, tripled and some cases quintupled the cost of putting on a play in a small theater, the smaller the theater, the bigger the hurt. And this choking effect cemented and expanded on the work of the stage actors’ union since 2012; understandably, there’s way less productions than there used to be. Some companies are now running as collectives where they don’t pay the actors at all, which they used to, and that doesn’t sit well with me. To be fair, I don’t think it sits well with them, either. But their rental costs have skyrocketed, and there’s so little public support for the arts. I mean, I just had a play done in Kosovo, a dirt-poor country, where you can get a full lunch with a drink for $7. . .

Walk outside here. All the goulash you could ever want.

Yeah, and the average rent for an apartment in the middle of Prishtina, the capital, is $500/month, and salaries are proportional to that. Yet they can pay their actors. They can pay their playwrights. I had a reading done there last year, and I got paid, just for a reading. If in a city like Los Angeles, they can’t pay their actors, I’m just going, jeemanie Christmas.

Audiences are often, pay-what-you-can. Do the same thing, do a collection plate, something, anything. . .

Right. Right.

Give them the dignity of having a paid job.

Right. Well, that’s what it was under what they used to call Equity Waiver, they’d get stipends per-performance, but the union shut that down on the grounds that they were being exploited. So now, all these small theaters where they used to work have gone out of business or scaled back their productions by 75%. Of course, the actors have other jobs, in TV or in restaurants, or teaching, while in the theater, opportunities for paid work on stage are half of what they were, or they work for free, or they sit home and watch Netflix instead of doing theater.

We had the same thing upstate. We were, like, the only show in town, we had to jump through every hoop, there’s nothing else going on, so I tried to focus all their attention on us, and they’re like, hmmm, should you really be doing this? I mean, do you want actors to work?

Exactly.

All these SAG actors up there, all they want to do is make a little movie and film it at a house that their father owns: Let ’em do it. I mean really, just let ’em do it.

It’s like you going to the stairwell at the Natural History Museum on the University of Kansas. . .

 Exactly. And I had the equivalent. I had teachers going, is that okay? Should he be doing that? Is it really that frightening to you, the idea that people just want to put on a play?

The damage here is on several levels. First, the number of productions since 2015 has gone down by 50%

Wow.

And most of the damage is to the smaller theaters. The larger theaters, they’re already paying union wages, so they’re not affected by this. They’re still reeling from the after-effects of Covid.  It’s the little guys who take the artistic risks, or who used to. That’s the first thing. The second thing, I’ve noticed is the level of risk and adventure, as you describe it, has gone way down. And these small theaters, maybe because they’re living so hand-to-mouth now, these smaller theaters are among the most partisan of the ‘let’s give new voices a platform’ — maybe for the grants, I don’t know. On one level it’s great, new voices, bravo to that. And, to be fair, some of these plays are really potent. But not many. Putting my critic’s hat on for a moment; so many that I’ve seen are just so doctrinaire and predictable, and I’m going, did nobody else see this as a problem? Did they really think this is ready? And I’m imagining all of the deserving plays out there, by new voices and old voices, all those plays that aren’t getting done because this stuff is gumming up the works. . .  A survey we did last year told us that audiences are also getting bored with local theater. They say they want to be either entertained or challenged. It’s your popcorn test. They’d rather stay home. And to some extent, they are.

Sometimes the theaters just tie themselves up in knots with this stuff. I mean, what have you accomplished with that? Giving somebody a half-assed production of a half-baked play. Can we not say to somebody, this is a problem, you need to work on this some more? I tell myself that all the time. I see something of mine up and I say, I didn’t crack that one yet. Can people just not hear that something is not good? Does that mean they’re stupid? No, it just means you wrote a play that’s not as good as it could have been.

It means you’re a playwright. Just a playwright.

 “Just a playwright.” That could be on coffee mug, I like that. On the other side, it could say, “Or you could be, if you did the work.” Or as you look down inside the mug.

It’s really tricky. So I had this play. Nobody would do it here.

Oh, great, close out with a story about [yourself]. I like it. You’re my kind of person.

            (Laughter)

Oh, come on, you asked about L.A.

I did. That’s true. I gave you the opening, and you went charging in, like a true mensch. Where was it?

A few theaters across the city.

In the city.

In the city of L.A.

You’re telling me the Geffen didn’t do it?

Shocking, I know.

[Disclosure: The Geffen knows nothing about this play.]

Next Zoom we can have just a Geffen talk. You’ll just have to make it two hours. I can’t get it all in, in one. The highs and lows will not fit into one short hour.

Well, they’ve got their new artistic director [Tarell Alvin McCraney]

God bless him, may he figure everything out. I’ll tell you one thing he can figure out is that the big theater really shouldn’t be a theater. The little one, amazing. The big one, it’s like you’re at the Masonic Temple. The sound quality is not great. That’s for them to figure out. They’re not asking me. Anyway, you couldn’t get the play done.

Not here. And they picked it up in Kosovo. And they translated it into Albanian. And they sent me a copy of it on Facebook, and I figure, that’s really helpful because, you know, I’ve been studying Albanian all my life.

Oh, you just run it by a couple of Albanian friends on the corner. . .

            (Laughter)

Well, I ran it through Google Translate, and I’m going, you know this is not bad. And then I went over there, and they read it around a table, and I followed along in English, and the rhythms seem to comport pretty nicely, and the actors were all laughing in all the right places, so I’m going, okay, this seems okay. And they came up with minor dramaturgical notes, having more to do with context than the text, and they absolutely transformed this play and gave it an urgency it didn’t have before. I won’t go into detail because I don’t want to bore you, just to say they figured out this play really quickly, with minor adjustments, it became a different play. And their production really sizzled. On opening night, the Minister of the Interior shows up, a standing ovation for curtain call, and not one but two national TV stations were there taking interviews, and when I got back to L.A., they sent me the review from their daily national newspaper, and of course it was in Albanian, but they translated the closing line for me, which was something like, “This is among the best shows seen on any Kosovo stage in the past several years.” It’s now in their repertory and will be in their international festival in October.

This play that you couldn’t get done in L.A. . .

Exactly. And I’m wondering, why is it so comparatively easy on the other side of the world? Is it just, the grass is greener. . .?

 That stuff does happen. But it is funny, sometimes. Or just getting people to read things. It doesn’t feel like, in our lifetime, it’s gotten any easier. I feel like I’m still doing the same thing as when I was kid, going, I’ve got to make my own fun. I’m happy enough to do it. I’m a roll-up-my-sleeves and do it person. Having grown up on a farm, I have a great work ethic driven into my head, occasionally with the back side of a hand. I don’t fear working. People say, but don’t you hate re-writing?

No.

And I say no, because that’s, like, writing. What part of this is not writing to you? Sometimes, these people who don’t want to change anything, they think it’s like perfect . . . Only Edward Albee got away with that. And only because he had a great line. He said, “Frankly, I just know better.” You can’t argue with that. That’s genius. I’m the first one to tell you guys, you’re not geniuses. So roll up those sleeves and do it again. And it could be great. We’ll leave them with that. We’ll leave on a high note. It could be great. Just don’t use the words always and never, and everything will be fine.

Exactly. Well, I’m glad we ended with you rather than me. 

Well, I don’t know. It’s still about you. . .

As it should be . . .

But I got myself in there. As other good playwrights would do, I wedged myself into your story. I believe the word is weaseling our way in.

But let’s bring this full circle back to Chekhov. And there’s all kinds of books about his theories in Playwrights on Playwriting and that kind of thing. But he wrote out his theories in letters to friends and family. And Maxim Gorky wrote to him, you know like a young screenwriter, and asked something like, what’s the key? How do you become a good writer? And Chekhov replied with three words: “Write. Write. Write.”

There was a correspondence Chekhov had with his brother, Mikhail, who was also a writer, and a critic by the way . . .

 I know what Chekhov wrote: “Can you get me something for my chest?”

[Chekhov died of tuberculosis]

That’s pretty sick.

 It’s not very nice, I know.

So Chekov’s brother was struggling with one of his plays, complaining, as playwrights do. And Chekhov wrote back to him, something to the effect of: It’s really, really difficult to write a good play. But do you understand how much more difficult, and painstaking, and time-consuming, and excruciating, it is to write a bad one?

 In that letter to Gorky, he was taking much the same tack. Along the lines of, it doesn’t really matter: A bad play will soon be forgotten. You just have to keep writing, and with a little luck, you might come up with something great.  

“If I Needed Someone,” by Neil Labute, opens at City Garage August 2.  Bergamot T1 Space 2525 Michigan Ave Santa Monica. https://citygarage.org