Playwright Brian Otaño

The Rewards and Costs of Remaining True to Oneself

By Amanda L. Andrei

Playwright, screenwriter, and IAMA ensemble member Brian Otaño has struggled as a playwright, being largely ignored by the New York theater scene where he grew up. This is among the reasons he figured writing for TV might be a better option, and for the past ten years, he has balanced his TV career while still pursuing theater work in L.A. This year, he was recently selected as the 2024 recipient of IAMA’s Rhimes Unsung Voices Playwriting Commission, sponsored by award-winning writer and producer Shonda Rhimes (Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, Inventing Anna).

Born in Brooklyn, Otaño moved to LA in 2014. His father was an NYC firefighter who searched Ground Zero in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, and his mother was a paraprofessional for the NYC Department of Education in addition to being a gownmaker and caregiver. His plays include The Dust, based on family experiences of his father dealing with “9/11 lung,” Tara, which chronicles the fallout of child sexual abuse across generations, and First In Last Out, his newest piece for the Rhimes Commission, which deals with public virtue vs. private maltreatment in the entertainment industry.

For Otaño, his work in the theater presents a quest for authenticity. The degree to which he succeeds will be partly a measure of his writing skill, but it will also be a test of whether our theater is actually interested in Otaño’s brand of humanism, or whether, like so much else in the world, it would rather traffic in artifice and glossy surfaces.

Meet Brian Otaño.

On Entering the worlds of theater and playwriting:

I’ve always been writing – journaling, fan fiction, poetry, and I was a voracious reader. Combine that with high school musical theater, and you get a playwright. (He laughs) I did a year in an acting conservatory before I decided writing is where I wanted to be.

First impressions of Los Angeles:

I visited LA a few years before I moved here. I was dazzled by the palm trees, the beach. A friend took me to Amoeba and I bought a used copy of  Celebrity Skin, put that CD in, and my first impression of LA was that it was very sunny and rambunctious and fun, all set to Hole’s Celebrity Skin album.

I moved out here in pursuit of television and wanted to keep pursuing theater, so I found my community and it branched into different areas. It was a slow process – it took a few years before I found a niche.

On writing roles for actors:

I write idiosyncratic people who you could find in the world, but probably never find sitting in a theater audience. Storytelling for me falls into a few different buckets – resurrections gone wrong, women and gowns unraveling, and homicidal children. I like the characters to sound really specific and salty, characters who sounded like the women I grew up with like in Sheepshead Bay, or the housing project my grandmother lived in. The kinds of characters Kathy Bates could really dig into at every age.

On building worlds for the stage:

I like the worlds I write to feel like home, but at the same time, has a lot of emotional trap doors and a trick bookcase and maybe a ghost or two. The audience should feel like they’re in a home where they feel welcome, but in the next breath, also like they’re in danger.

The Dust, his 911 play, was met with indifference:

That was a difficult play to approach. I had this front row seat to a nightmare that I think a lot of people hadn’t experienced. I reconnected with the firefighting community, with a dramaturg who happened to be my best friend and was also a relative of someone who died in the attacks and a founding staff member of the 9/11 Museum. It was a saving grace, reconnecting with these people to get a sense of whether or not what my family experienced was an anomaly – we didn’t know my dad was sick until it was too late, and it felt like there was a common threat, which I think was that these men had the tools to deal with their vulnerability.

After it was met with indifference, it made me feel more motivated to pivot to television. That play, and Tara, got me countless jobs in television and opened doors I would have never expected. I grappled with the fact that they had so much power in one part of the industry while they went overlooked in another part. But I hope the takeaway from that can be that people should keep following their creative impulses, keep excavating these stories that they need to process and put out in the world. Had I waited for New York theater to be the thing that launched me, I don’t know where I’d be.

Latinx and a Puerto Rican heritage, celebrating and critiquing:

I was raised in a culture that really valued family, education, and religion – and there were some points of view I had to distance myself from if I was going to survive. In my play Tara, you’ve got these three generations – a problematic past, a really complicated present, and an optimistic future. And that’s sort of my relationship to my culture and how I experience it.

With the play I’m working on for the Shonda commission, examining how Latinx people are expected to move through the entertainment industry – it can be a real minefield. They’re paving the way, but at a cost to their psyche.

It comes back to horror, right? It’s so much more complicated to examine the calls that are coming from inside the house. The plays don’t ignore the oppression coming from the outside, but also exist in dialogue with work other artists are making.

Queerness informing his work:

My queerness helped me cultivate a voice that demands wit and rhythm, whether or not I’m writing queer characters. It’s also oriented me in such a way that I’m always trying to find a different angle into a particular story.

Power and abuse in the entertainment industry:

“There are people blazing trails, but also treating the people that work for them horribly. And I thought, I’m going to stick my head in that particular lion’s mouth, because I think there are ways to rise to power without losing your mind or your humanity.”

I didn’t know what my next play was going to be until I saw Echo Theater’s production of Crabs in a Bucket by Bernardo Cubría. It was an exploration of ambition through perspective of people who had little or no power, and I just thought about people who have the least agency in this town: the assistants of the people who have all the power. There are people blazing trails, but also treating the people that work for them horribly. And I thought, I’m going to stick my head in that particular lion’s mouth, because I think there are ways to rise to power without losing your mind or your humanity.

I think remaining humble, remaining teachable. And this is like a general rule of life, if you’re the smartest person in the room you’re sitting in, you’re in the wrong room.

Transformation:

My process before was very intuitive, a lot of exploring which was fun. There always needs to be room for spontaneity in one’s process, but for me, after a while, it felt like going into the forest without a map or compass. Incorporating more nuts and bolts, more practical tools, has been really helpful.

What advice would you give your younger self?

I’ve got nothing for my younger self, but for people coming up – figure out what your story is, your fingerprint, and what’s the best container for getting that into the world. Find the people who are going to love you regardless of how successful you are. Find that story that you and only you were put on this planet to write.