SRS Bonus Content - Brett Neveu and Scooby Doo

Well, folks, we've come to the stretch just before the finale of our Summer Reading Series (Odradek by Brett Neveu, Monday the 30th @ Swim Cafe, 7:30pm) and with that our last installment of exclusive playwright interviews. With out further adieu...

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Tell us about your play in one sentence...
A troubled boy distances himself from his father and his doctor after a chance meeting with an otherworldly creature who leaves in the shadows of a stairwell.

Is this play like much of your other plays?
No, actually. It's more abstract than even my more abstract work. It's also inspired by a photograph by Jeff Wall (you can see the actual photo RIGHT NOW at the Art Institute) and I don't often base entire plays on a single image.

What was the impetuous for you to write this play?
Ah. I suppose I just said. The photograph, for sure, but also the affects that psychoactive drugs can have on teenagers.

Who is a bigger influence on your life as a writer, Papa Smurf or Thomas Jefferson?
Neither. It was more a Scooby-Doo thing.

What was the worst play you've ever written and how has it affected your life as a writer?
The worst play I've ever written (according to those that remember) was called "Potato Finger". It didn't really affect me too much because I actually liked it.

What are your biggest pop culture influences?
Punk and post-punk rock music, 80's cop dramas and (as I mentioned) Scooby-Doo.

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?
This play has more of those sorts of things than my typical work. I'm influenced by the physical, visual and aural but rarely define them clearly in my plays (leaving those sorts up to my collaborators). With Odradek, there is no choice but to define those elements due to the odd world in which the play lives.