oobr Interview

Interview by Adam Cooper

Winter 2001

Adam Cooper: How did you spend your summer?

Larry Myers: I was in Hollywood and San Francisco. I met some people who are interested in doing my plays in LA. The rest of the time I was in Pennsylvania where I was born. I was going through all of my family’s possessions, sorting through my whole past. I also had my house painted. The trees and shrubbery were all cut down. From 6am I heard chopping and it was very much like The Cherry Orchard or The Three Sisters.

AC: Was your summer productive?

LM: I would say it was a passage. Passages can be very painful and traumatizing.

AC: Speaking of the summer, congratulations on winning two OOBR awards.

LM: I always thought that most critics made Nostradamus look like Jim Carrey, that they were so severe and for many of them their only inner life was an occasional suppository. I was just thrilled to have two. I was also happy that the awards were for the whole production and that everybody got a citation.

AC: You’ve been working in off-off-Broadway for a long time.

LM: Is it long? I know people that have been there for a lot longer than I have. I am a playwright from a movement that happened thirty years ago.

AC: How many years has it been?

LM: Maybe 15 years.

AC: How has your experience there changed over time?

LM: I think it’s much harder to have a play done. It costs more money and nobody cares about it. With a few exceptions the whole downtown theatre scene went away.

AC: What has happened to the theatre audience?

LM: It’s been silenced. People stay at home and stare into a computer or they go out to dinner. It’s the MTV mindset. Everything is an instant image. People are apathetic, aloof or uninvolved. They have no patience for theatre and they don’t want to listen to ideas. That’s the exact opposite of what theatre is. They totally deny the dark side and they won’t confront the secrets and the horrible things underneath the surface. Theatre is emotional and personal and people are embarrassed by it. They don’t want to feel in public with strangers.

AC: What is being an off-off-Broadway playwright like?

LM: You have to be compulsive or addictive to do what I do. It’s like a disease or an illness. You waste your time and beat yourself up doing it. You certainly aren’t getting fame or cash. You have to love ideas and language and maybe failure. Theatre people are very impressionable and vulnerable. They are bleeding all the time.

AC: Why did you become a playwright?

LM: I felt I was very limited as an actor. I felt there weren’t parts for me. But I’ve always had a passion for literature. I was a poet first and a short story writer. I still am.

AC: Which playwrights have influenced you the most?

LM: Tennessee Williams. This man crawled into my bloodstream and stayed there. I have a fondness for Sam Shepard, John Guare, and Lanford Wilson. I like some of Nicky Silver, Caryl Churchill and Edward Bond. And of course Beckett.

AC: What keeps you writing plays?

LM: Obsession. Having answers and having a world you think you control.

AC: You write a lot about small town life. Why?

LM: Maybe I am re-evaluating the beginning of my life; that was the milieu I grew up in. I think that is the square root of our culture. The uninformed, unenlightened. I write about the evil and darkness that comes from there.

AC: Why do you structure your plays around monologues?

LM: I think the way people speak is in monologue. They’re also easier to rehearse. I think they’re a rant or rave or outburst. They are sort of like poems.

AC: Do you have a specific audience you are trying to reach?

LM: No. I just channel what comes out. There are times when I’ve tried to write what an audience wants but you can’t do that. You have to write what is dictated to you by your psyche or by forces stronger than you are.

AC: How has the NYC theatre scene changed over the course of your career?

LM: I think it’s gotten very sad. It’s so limited. Broadway theatre is a nightclub or theme park; it’s not ideas or poetry. I think there’s a lot being done but not a lot taken seriously. It’s just dismissed. It’s like being a persecuted race. There are fewer and fewer chosen people.

AC: And the quality of the productions?

LM: I think it ranges from really good to just appallingly horrible. Many of my best plays were written in the audience while watching another play. I have to get them out of my head. My biggest complaint with the plays now being written is that they are not in touch with the world outside the theatre world. There’s no sense of continuity or development. We don’t have multiple points of view. This is a time of suppression, censorship, and oppression and it’s very frightening.

AC: Do you feel theatre can still play a vital role in our society?

LM: Absolutely. I see theatre as instructional and educational. It should be a part of everyday life. But I want to see more young people participate in theatre. Xerox fluid is flowing through the blood streams of the young but it’s not their fault. They are not in touch with what they are saying. There’s this pose that they are ripe and right on and I don’t buy it.

AC: Any new works in production?

LM: Zip Code of Atlantis in March at the Theater for a New City. This is about reality television and James Dean impersonators.

AC: Why do you stay in the off-off-Broadway scene?

LM: Maybe I’m lazy or don’t feel my material is appropriate for off-Broadway. I do new things rather than rework three things over and over. Maybe it’s the bohemianism or the freedom. Maybe I’m living in the past. Perhaps it’s the ability to take risks and be uncompromising. I certainly don’t write not wanting to ruffle anyone’s feathers; I do just the opposite.