KnockOUT! On to Round Two . . . SRS Bonus Content - Scott Barsotti

With great success we had our first of three installments of the Summer Reading Series last night. We had a wonderful cast to read Joe's play and a great conversation to follow with some friends, family and even some strangers (who are now friends). I also had the best chocolate cupcake I've had in ages! Collision is pretty much in love with our new friend Joe Meno and our lovely summer spot at the Swim Cafe. Thanks to all those who were there last night!

If you have any questions or comments about the Summer Reading Series or any of the three plays or playwrights, please post a comment to blog and we will respond.

Next up is Scott Barsotti's play Brewed. This seven woman wonder is going to be something else! Check out a couple of things that Scott has to say about writing and his play...

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Tell us about your play in one sentence...
Six sisters conduct an ongoing family ritual in solitary shifts, until one sister calls all together and invites an outsider in, causing old venom to emerge.

Is this play like much of your other plays? In what ways?
It is in that it is character and dialogue driven. It has more to do with personalities and ethics than politics and ideas...though these things all intertwine, of course. It's different in that there isn't a great deal of stillness or silence in Brewed whereas there is in my other plays. Long sections of direction where no one speaks, only moves, acts...Plays are typically a minute and a half a page, and my plays often run a little longer than that rule due to those periods of silence and action. Brewed however is less than a minute a page because there is very little silence (part of the point of it), and a great deal of overlapping dialogue and movement.

What was the impetus for you to write this play?
I give myself assignments...rather than choosing topics or themes, I usually start with form and character, I say "This is the kind of play I want to write" rather than "This is what I want to write about." I had written several plays consecutively with a strong female lead and received a lot of positive feedback about those characters, but what I wanted to see was if I could write women in relation to other women, as my female characters were typically opposite men and relating to them, or relating to themselves via monologues. I wanted to write a play that was all women to test not only my ability to write women in relation to each other, but also to test the idea that characters need to be conceived as gendered beings. In Brewed I don't think they needed the constraint necessarily, they're not "women characters," but people.

Who is a bigger influence on your life as a writer, Papa Smurf or Thomas Jefferson?
Thomas Jefferson is on the $2 bill, which makes me think of money. Since I have no money, I'd have to say Papa Smurf by default.

Who or what are your biggest pop culture influences?
That's hard to say really. I do my best to avoid pop culture. I watch a lot of old movies and read plays and books whenever I can. I try not to watch TV at all, and when I do, it's usually an athletic event or educational programming. However, lately, I've been very interested in locations and climates (not in terms of politics and global warming but literally people lost in the desert, buried in snow, sitting on a rock in the middle of the ocean...adversity and fear are very interesting to me because danger--real or imagined--exposes people, which can be crippling or liberating). Part of this interest comes from watching Man vs. Wild with Bear Grylls. It's my new favorite show on the discovery channel where he drops himself into extreme climates with only a knife, canteen, flint and the clothes on his back. It offers insights into necessity and priorities, which in the civilized world have become pretty perverted. That's really interesting to me lately.

Collision likes to say that our work is a bold collision of the physical, visual, and aural realms. We seem to think that you are a writer that has those values as well. How do you see these realms alive in your writing?
My writing has improved (though slowed) since working more as an actor and director in the last 18 months. My plays are usually full of gestures that create sound, gestures that create pictures. The human body is much more interesting than elaborate sets and props. I keep that in mind when I write, and try to create those "collisions" in the text. The most fascinating and curious intersections of sound, impulse, image, shape come from the body; the body shifts, changes, moves.